I 



RECREATIONS OF 
A PSYCHOLOGIST 



^3^ 

G. STANLEY HALL 

Recreations of a Psychologist 

Morale 

Adolescence 

Youth 

Educational Problems 

Founders of Modern 
Psychology 

These Are Appleton Books 

D. APPLETON & COMPANY 

Publishers New York 



T241 A 



RECREATIONS OF 
A PSYCHOLOGIST 



// 



r*.' 



BY 



G. STANLEY HALL 

AUTBOB OB" "adolescence," "edTTCATIONAI. PBOBLBaiS," 

"rOUHTDEES OF MODERN PSTCHOLOaY," "jESUS, 

THE CHRIST, IN THE LIQHT OF PSTCHOLOGY,',' 

fUOHAL^ THE BUPBEkCE 8TANDABD 

09 UFB Am) OOHDUCT." 




D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

NEW YORK LONDON 

1920 






COPYBIQHT, 1920, BY 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



1^10V -6 1920 



VSraTED m THE T7HTTED STATES 09 ABEBICA 



■0)CIA601435 



PREFACE 

No one can possibly realize better than the author of 
these vacation skits how crude and amateurish they are 
if judged from the standpoint of literature. If they have 
any merit, or their publication any excuse, it will be as 
illustrations of psychological principles. 

**The Fall of Atlantis,'* just written, was largely sug- 
gested by last summer's reading of stories of ideal states; 
also by Zeller's account of the fabled strikes of piper- 
priests and of the women in ancient Kome; but above all 
by the profound conviction that certain degenerative 
changes — industrial, social, hygienic, and religious — are 
going on in our civilization and especially in our own land 
which may perhaps be realized by a larger historic per- 
spective, which only imagination can supply. It might 
have been entitled, * * Strikes of Doctors, Lawyers, Teachers, 
Clergy, and finally Women, Causing the Downfall and at 
last the Physical Engulf ment of a Superstate.'' It is in 
some sense an aftermath of my '* Morale." 

**How Johnnie's Vision Came True" was suggested 
partly by the Schopenhauer-Weininger theory of sex 
counterparts; also by pubic initiation rites and their 
morale, described in my '* Adolescence. " It is meant, too, 
to illustrate the psychology of Doppelgamger and of Mond- 
sucht, as represented by Rank and Sadger respectively, a 
theme which many writers have attempted from Peter 
ScMemihl to Wilde's Dorian Grey. 

**A Conversion" is from a barren, narrow religiosity to 
true morality, and illustrates the same psychological prin- 
ciple which Schrempf attempted to validate in his CEdipus 



vi PREFACE 

redivivus theory that Jesus was, like Augustine, a fallen 
man restored. One grave lapse may bring atoning virtue 
of a higher kind by way of compensation. 

'*Preestablished Harmony'^ is not so much an extrava- 
ganza of the ** personal equation" as psychologists know it, 
as of the older philosophy of ** correspondences, ' ' with of 
course no trace of imagination in it. 

''Getting Married in Germany" is an almost literal ac- 
count, in which my wife collaborated, of our actual ex- 
perience in being married in Berlin — although I did not 
fail in my examination, as the hero of the story is made 
to do. This was printed in the Atlamtic Monthly in 1881, 
and I here express thanks for the permission to republish 
it. 

'*A Man's Adventure in Domestic Industries" is an il- 
lustration of one of the various forms of midsummer mad- 
ness which the author has experienced and observed. 

''A Leap Year Romance." I have rediscovered and in- 
cluded this boyish effusion, first printed in Appleion^s 
Journal, 1878, with hesitation. I think I had never read 
it from the time it appeared until just now and had so 
entirely forgotten how it came out that it seemed as though 
it could hardly be mine. It is a good transcript, I think, 
of the out^r and inner life of a typical small western col- 
lege and of the experiences of a young professorling. No 
young lady who to-day might make such unconventional 
advances toward the man of her choice would or should 
ever be subjected to anything like such penance, and per- 
haps the day is nearer than we think when woman can, 
with all propriety, take the first step, as the instances are 
already vastly more common than we dull males realize 
when their initiative is decisive in happy matings. Per- 
haps the chief point illustrated here is the religious sub- 
limation of love in the heroine. 

The **Note on Early Memories," written some years 



PREFACE vii 

ago, should not perhaps have been included here, for if 
it has any value it is a purely psychological one, illustrating 
how experiences very long and effectively submerged may 
with reenvisagement be made to glow up slowly and dimly 
after the lapse of decades. To the writer the chief lesson 
of this study was the intense and predominantly emotional 
response of childhood to every feature of its environment, 
for, over and over, when there was no trace of recollection 
or anything which psychology regards as memory, objects 
once familiar evoked a very high degree of affectivity, 
quite without imagery of any kind, indicating that it is 
the generic tone that survives most persistently, and also 
that country life and its close contact with Nature in child- 
hood develops rich and rank forms of emotivity, which are 
totally unconscious at the time, so that the survival value 
of these unconscious experiences is far greater than our 
current psychology has ever suspected. 

I am under unusual obligations to my secretary, Miss 
Mary M. McLoughlin, who collected and has read proof of 
all the articles and has also made many helpful sugges- 
tions. 

G. Stanley Hall 
Worcester, Mass. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTEB PAOB 

I. The Fall op Atlantis 1 

I. The Origin of this Screed 1 

II. The Story of Our Discovery op Atlantis . 7 

III. The Cult of Health and Its Decline . . 17 

IV. The Triumph and Fall of Justice ... 28 
V. The Glory and Shame of Learning . . 45 

VI. The Zenith and Nadir of Religion ... 71 

VII. Woman at Her Best and Worst ... 99 

VIII. The Last Scenes and Days op Atlantis . 116 

II. How Johnnie's Vision Came True 128 

III. A Conversion 147 

IV. Preestablished Harmony — a Midsummer Revery op a 

Psychologist 175 

V. Getting Married in Germany 184 

VI. A Man's Adventure in Domestic Industries . . . 204 

VII. A Leap Year Romance 221 

VIII. Note on Early Memories 297 



IX 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 

I 

THE ORIGIN OF THIS SCREED 

For days I had racked my brain as a menAer of a com- 
mittee to arbitrate one of the over three hundred strikes 
on at that time in this country, and we were almost in 
despair trying to reconcile the irreconcilables of both sides. 
I had worked till very late that night trying to develop a 
new plan which seemed a forlorn hope and yet a hope, 
and as a nightcap I happened to pick up a copy of Plato 
which opened in the BepuhUc where Critias tells *Hhe 
old-world story of Atlantis which had come down in his 
family from his ancestor, Solon, who got it in Egypt." 
This always seemed to me about the most charming of all 
the so-called Platonic myths. This marvelous kingdom, he 
tells us, once filled a large part of what is now the Atlantic 
basin west of the Pillars of Hercules. The soil was rich 
and yielded twice a year. All metals, including all the 
precious ones, and jewels were found here in great abun- 
dance, and there was a high and central mountain city 
surrounded by a vast plain, itself bounded by a canal one 
hundred feet deep, six hundred feet broad, and three 
thousand miles long. A temple of indescribable magnificence 
had been reared to Neptune, the patron deity, with a roof 
of ivory and pinnacles of gold, and in it was a huge golden 
statue of the god reaching to the very roof, surrounded by 
one hundred Nereids riding on dolphins. There was also 
a golden statue of Atlas and the Ten Kings and their wives. 

1 



2 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

There were ten thousand chariots and twelve hundred 
ships. Never had the world seen such wealth and power 
as in this glorious state nine thousand years before the 
great deluge! 

**For many generations the people of this island were 
obedient to the laws and their kings ruled them wisely and 
uprightly, setting no value on their riches nor caring 
for aught save for virtue only. But as time went on, the 
divine part of them slowly grew faint and they waxed 
insolent, and thus in the very plentitude of their power 
they provoked the jealousy of the gods, who determined to 
destroy them.'' The Athenians in an age of great glory 
that had been forgotten conquered them and ** there was 
an earthquake and a deluge and the earth opened and 
swallowed up" victors and vanquished, and the great 
island sank beneath the sea so that where it was there is to- 
day only water, mud- and sand-banks. 

Would, I thought as I sleepily closed the volume, that 
this antique legend had told us more than is implied in 
the above few phrases of the causes of the decline and fall 
of this most wondrous empire of earth! The "jealousy of 
the gods" and the *' earthquake and deluge" must in our 
age be regarded only as symbols, but of what? Must na- 
tions, even the greatest, die like individuals? Can man 
never reach a stable society like that of such lowly 
creatures as bees and ants whose form of state is far older 
than man and which will perhaps last on unchanged when 
man is extinct? With this thought I threw myself, stiU 
dressed, upon a couch in my den and slept. 

It was Saturday night and on Sunday morning I awoke 
to find my faithful Henri, who for years has cared for my 
small suite, served such meals as I want in my room, and 
looked after me generally, just entering with my break- 
fast. Henri was intelligent and observant, rarely spoke 
unless spoken to, knew all my needs and even whims, and 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 3 

was so devoted that it seemed as though his only purpose 
in life was to make me comfortable. Long ago I had 
rescued him from a fate worse than death, and he knew 
that in my way I was no less devoted to him than he to 
me — but that is another story. Occasionally when I had 
been very intent upon my work (for I was a fairly suc- 
cessful writer of social and political romances) I had not 
left my quarters for days and had seen only him. 

On awaking now I found myself fully dressed and not 
in bed but on the couch in my den. Rising to my feet, 
I was surprised to find myself feeling faint and should 
have fallen had Henri not supported and assisted me to 
a chair. I felt seedy and mussed and was surprised to 
find, as I rested my chin upon my hand, that there was 
a week's growth of beard upon my face. I called for a 
mirror and drew back at what I saw. My cheeks were 
haggard, there were dark rings under my eyes, my linen 
was soiled, and I was generally tousled and disheveled. 
* * What does all this mean, Henri ? " I cried. And then slowly 
it all came out. It was indeed Sunday morning, but a week 
had passed, of which I could recall nothing. Henri said 
I had not once slept in bed or removed my clothes, bathed, 
or made any toilet, and had partaken mechanically of the 
three daily meals he had served, ignoring him and leaving 
his questions unanswered. He said I had been writing 
every day and had not once left my rooms during the 
week. I could recall nothing, but I had a haunting sense 
that Morpheus had brought me a wonderful dream full of 
strange beauty and also of pathos and tragedy. Long I 
strove to recall at least some items of it, but in vain. Al- 
though Henri insisted that I had spent most of my time 
in writing, no manuscript was anywhere to be found. 

When I had bathed, changed, breakfasted, visited the 
barber, trimmed my nails, looked over the papers of the 
last week and also my accumulated mail, and cross-exam- 



4 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

ined Henri (who reported that he had thought me so 
strange and preoccupied that he had made excuses to 
visitors and telephone calls, for which discretion I com- 
mended him) and had done what I could to arrange my 
delayed affairs, I sat down to think it all over. 

I realized that I was not *'all there" and also that I 
must have perpetrated one of those psychic fugues from 
reality of which I had read much. But of what my autistic 
mind had done or where it had been during the lost week I 
could find no hint or cue. Had my fugitive soul been lured 
away by some good or bad power ; had my scribblings been 
mad nonsense or perhaps in some unknown tongue, which, 
if it ever be found, would need the genius and patience of 
a Pfister or a Maeder to interpret; or had my personality 
been a mere calamus or pen, as of old the Evangelists were 
thought to be of the Holy Ghost; or had I written some- 
thing that illustrated the higher powers of man — in some 
rapt state of trance or ecstasy, as their muse sometimes in- 
spires great geniuses to do, an experience of which I had 
hitherto never had the slightest trace? Long I pondered 
trying to find some point of contact with my dissociated 
other self. 

When at length I roused myself and turned to my ne- 
glected task of strike arbitration, and later of continuing 
the serial story to which I had given all my spare time 
and energy before this remarkable episode, it was with a 
distinct abatement of the zest that usually impelled me. 
Some quality of virtue seemed to have gone out of me. All 
the world I knew seemed not only less real and actual but 
at times almost phantasmal and dreamlike. Men appeared 
somehow a little less worthy ; women not quite so adorable ; 
our very civilization less satisfactory; and the future of 
the race less assured and bright. I found mediocrity where 
I had before seen excellence, and in all I did there was a 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 5 

tinge of anxiety or fearsomeness that took no form and 
had no object; and thus things went on for weeks. 

One morning Henri brought me a bulky package in 
my mail. When I opened it, words cannot describe my 
amazement, for it contained a manuscript, unquestionably 
in my own handwriting, already set up in galley proof, of 
the narrative which follow o. I perused it with growing 
wonder and awe for it all seemed new to me. And yet I 
had to accept the evidence that my own hand had written 
it, and Henri recollected having mailed a large envelope 
for me late the Saturday night before I found myself. 

Now at last, although the dark veil of amnesia still sepa- 
rates this extraordinary week from the rest of my life, it 
is pretty clear what happened. As a patriot and a student 
of social, industrial, and political affairs from a romancer's 
point of view, I had grown more and more depressed at 
the conditions and prospects not only of my own country 
but of the world in the reactions that followed the war — 
not only labor troubles but profiteering; the inability of 
cranky, irreconcilable wills to compromise and do team- 
work; the lack of public spirit in public affairs, and the 
persistence and dominance of private interests everywhere ; 
the leaders- who, faced by problems too large for them, 
showed all the neurotic symptoms of balking, stressing 
minor points because perspective had been lost in the 
sudden larger horizon; the dominance of sectional, class, 
party, and even individual views and interests all the more 
marked after the splendid unity of all during the war. My 
larger racial unconscious self had, under all these depress- 
ing impulsions, executed a unique flight from all the reality 
of our present era to another and extinct one. I had left 
my world and taken refuge in another in which fancy had 
sought to give expression to all the latent hopes and fears 
that the present situation has inspired for our civilization. 



6 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

Thus I hardly yet have any sense of personal ownership 
in my screed. 

It is in a sense a dream within a dream. There was 
first a projection of eighty years into the future in our own 
era when the discovery of the Atlantean remains were 
made, and then a projection backward many thousand 
years toward the beginning of another era. But if this 
double involution makes it hard and perhaps impossible 
for me to connect the consciousness of this strange and 
perhaps almost insane week of my life with my real, nor- 
mal self, it may also reduce the chance of my ever falling 
into this state again. If I ever do so and succeed in unifying 
my riven soul, remembering freely from one to the other 
state, this would be a symbol that our own age may come 
to knit up into its life the lessons of the era here resumed 
and really profit by them, and then I need not regard my 
narrative as fiction but as veracious, authentic, and quin- 
tessential history to be taught, when its fuller records are 
published, in every educational institution throughout our 
world and in our colleges and universities, with professor- 
ates that specialize in it alone. It will be also noted that, 
while nothing that transpired in my mind during this week 
is known to me, when I was in this secondary state I 
seemed to have been able to command all my own knowledge 
of things in my primal and normal state, so that the 
power and range of my faculties were for seven days greatly 
enhanced, and it is doubtless this experience that causes 
me ever since to be haunted with an oppressive feeling of 
inferiority which, try as I may, I cannot shake off, and 
which, added to the depressive fears lest we of to-day may 
be going the way of Atlantis, almost drives me to melan- 
cholia. 

While I have no belief in spirit guidance or in any kind 
of supernatural impartation, I cannot escape a certain awe 
at this creation of my_ subliminal self which prevents me 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS T 

from changing a line or a syllable of the manuscript which 
thus came to me and on which at least I have a stronger 
claim than any one else Here, then, it is. 

n 

THE STORY OF OUR DISCOVERY OF ATLANTIS 

It was the year 2000 A.D. It was almost a new world 
as compared with ours of to-day. China, which had greatly 
extended her boundaries, was the most advanced and pow- 
erful of all the states of the world, and Slave- Germania^ 
came next. England, France and Italy were federated v 
together and with us, so that we felt that the boundaries of 
eastern France and northern Italy were part of our own 
frontier. The states of Latin America had organized 
themselves into one great republic, and only Africa was 
still divided and subjected. Surface transportation on 
land survived for all heavy wares, and air roadways were 
marked out in levels superposed one above the other, and 
the very intricate traffic rules were enforced by flying 
policemen. By this method only could the sky, especially 
in the earlier and later hours of the day, be kept from 
being darkened in many places by the clouds of aerial voy- 
agers on their way between their suburban homes and ur- 
ban offices. Thus there were hundreds of very high and 
many-storied garages, to which rapidly moving lifts were 
attached. Electricity had largely taken the place of steam 
and was also used everywhere for light and cooking. The 
telegraph and telephone had been largely superseded by 
wireless systems. Submarines could explore the bottom 
of the sea, where vast mineral wealth had been found, to 
say nothing of the salvage from the thousands of treasure 
ships ever since navigation began. Indeed it would require 
volumes, if not libraries, to tell of all the discoveries and 



8 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

inventions, of the advances of science, and all the great 
social reforms achieved, and also, alas! of all the growing 
evils, which constituted a no less sinister menace to the 
advancement of the human race than do those of our own 
day. The whole world was overpopulated. Every state 
and race had accepted the religion of eugenics and felt 
that the future belonged to those of them that were most 
fecund, and the squalor and vice at the bottom of the hu- 
man scale were never so destructive. Christian churches 
survived, but in their Protestant section chiefly as ethical 
culture societies, for no one save only the vulgar and super- 
stitious believed in individual survival after death or in a 
personal god, but most felt that this world must be so 
organized that man got his deserts here and in it. Catholi- 
cism alone was almost absolutely unchanged. It had 
neither progressed nor regressed. The rivalry between 
culture and Kttltur was still on. Marriage was more cir- 
cumspect, divorce easier, woman had become a greater so- 
cial and even political power, and man left to her the con- 
trol of nearly all matters relating to sex, family and young 
children. But all these items and many more at present 
were irrelevant to my dream. Nor were they the tenden- 
cies that chiefly determined it, and they have nothing to 
do with its great lesson. 

In this new dreamworld I had long been a student of the 
past, intent on learning all I could of every extinct civi- 
lization, and I also had a pragmatic propensity to utilize 
every lesson I could find here by applying it to present 
needs. I was a professor and had lectured on the history 
of excavations, not only those at Pompeii, Rome, Egypt, 
and Babylonia, but also those of Troy and Mycenae. The 
older and more completely vanished and forgotten by his- 
tory and revealed only by the spade were these ancient 
peoples, the greater was my interest in them. We had 
already deciphered the long-baffling inscriptions of Yuca- 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 9 

tan, had learned to read the quipu and the Druidic runes 
as we had long before learned to read Egyptian hiero- 
glyphs, thanks to the Rosetta stone. I had also been in- 
terested in lake dwellings, kitchen middens, mounds, the 
gigantic stone images of the Faster Islands, dolmens, and 
all vestiges of earlier man, not like the anthropologists of 
our day, who are so keen for traces of paleolithic cave- 
dweUers, for the Pithecanthropus and the Neanderthal 
race had little interest for me, for I was an archeologist 
whose chief desire was to extend the limits of the early 
history of advanced races everywhere backwards. 

In the year 2000 A.D. there was great interest in ex- 
ploring the sea basin for traces of man in the last areas 
of land that had been submerged by geologic and other 
cosmic and seismic influences, and there was much theoriz- 
ing concerning what Haeckel had called Lemuria, a lost 
sunken area somewhere between Madagascar and Australia, 
of which hundreds of eastward islands were the sunken and 
therefore disconnected highlands, a land in which many be- 
lieved we should find the true cradle of the human race 
if it was ever found at all. Here, too, it was believed 
man might possibly learn to read his title clearer to being 
a descendant of the extinct great fossil apes of Europe, 
whom the last great extension of the glacial era, which has 
now retreated to the present polar-ice cap, once drove 
southward. Certain it is that very much of the present 
sea area had once been land. All this and more of the 
same sort was more or less present in my strange dream, 
as indeed it had so often been in waking hours, for my chief 
wish in the world had long been to add to present-day 
knowledge in this field, and now sleep brought a unique 
wish-fulfillment, as so many dreams are only wishes come 
true. 

As, my dream unfolded, a great expedition of subma- 
rines was being equipped to explore the bottom of the sea in 



10 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

quest of traces of the sunken Atlantis. Homer had been 
proved more or less right about ancient Troy, once thought 
pure myth, and why might not the conjecture of Plato, 
a far more scientific thinker, be more than day-dreaming 
when he told us of Atlantis? Perhaps the ** mountain city, 
zones of the sea, the king's palace, the golden temple, and 
the statues" might now be really found; and if they ever 
were, what a wondrous new chapter it would add to his- 
tory; what a new hope of idealities in statecraft it would 
bring ; what, if the causes of its destruction could be ascer- 
tained, a wholesome warning it might give to modern 
man! As it is, belief that man could rise so high and 
nevertheless sink to utter extinction is, to say the least, not 
a very solid basis for optimism. Perhaps better knowledge 
of the fate of Atlantis would give us a new sorely needed 
lesson in humility. This was my general attitude, and so 
great was my interest in this new project that I had my- 
self enrolled among the many savants who had some of 
the spirit that animated the quest for the Holy Grail or the 
Niebelungen Hoard. 

There were three of these very unique and complicated 
seacraft equipped for this expedition, a description of 
which would be far too long, even if I had understood 
them, which I did only in part. Suffice it here to say, 
therefore, that they could rise, too, and go on the sur- 
face, while they could also crawl along the bottom like 
war tanks, but were usually moved by their propellers. 
They were immensely strong to resist the great pressure 
of the pontic abysses, and there were also very intricate 
devices for grappling and bringing in small, and looping 
and maintaining wire connections with large objects. 
Clever mechanisms controlled air pressure, extracting oxy- 
gen from the sea, and there were very thick and solid ob- 
servation windows of glass, through which electric lights 
enabled us to see far into clear and somewhat even into 



THE FALL OP ATLANTIS 11 

muddy and oozy water. But all these descriptions are quite 
aside from my purpose. 

We started our three huge craft abreast from a point 
near Cape Hatteras, about 36° N., and laid our course 
almost exactly along this latitude for Gibraltar or the Pil- 
lars of Hercules. After some fourteen miles of shallow 
but very slowly deepening shore water, we slid some two 
thousand feet down the steep sea-wall that skirts our 
eastern coast into the abysmal waters that constitute the 
true ocean. It was, of course, inky dark, absolutely sound- 
less, and there was no motion, for we were far below the 
reach of waves, storms, or oceanic currents. There were 

I also very few forms of life, although it was the graveyard 
of all the higher species which had for ages slowly rained 
down upon the bottom as they died. Our progress was 
very slow, despite our high-powered batteries, especially so 
when we had to climb some sunken atoll or reef tankwise. 
We also photographed every item of interest which our 

i electric lights revealed. But the irksomeness of the days, 
weeks, and months that followed was indescribably depress- 
ing. Every twenty-fourth day or so was a gala day, for 
then we had to rise for fresh oxygen, after tethering our- 
selves to the bottom by an anchor so that we might re- 
trace its cable to the same spot, and it was glorious to see 
the light and to feel and hear the movements of wind and 
wave. At length, nearing the end of the fifth month, after 
eleven days of very gradual ascent along the bottom, my 
craft, the middle one, found itself against a steep wall of 
basaltic stone, rising at an angle of 45°. Further 
examination showed that it was composed of huge blocks of 
stone of geometrical shapes, closely set together, not like 
those of Staffa, but evidently fitted and at some time mor- 
tised by human hands. These our photographs showed. 
The other craft were signaled and came to our aid, and in 
a few days we had its dimensions fairly well made out. It 



12 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

was a square, about two and one-third miles along each 
base, and rose, not like a teocalli but like an Egyptian pyra- 
mid in steps to an altitude of about 1,200 feet. On the top 
was a huge plane, partly of solid rock, as if a mountain 
had been squarely truncated, while the rest of the square 
was completed by huge Cyclopian masonry. We knew at 
once that our long, tedious, and costly search was rewarded 
and that we had by the rarest of good fortunes and that, 
too, on our first crossing, almost stumbled upon the very 
acropolis of the lost Atlantis. "We sent up buoys to the sur- 
face and wirelessed our discovery. Thus began a long 
period of very specialized exploration, in which all civi- 
lized nations and scores of savants participated with en- 
thusiasm for years. Suffice it here to say that the remains 
of the great temple of Neptune were sufficiently intact to 
enable experts to reconstruct its plan with considerable 
confidence, that nearly all of the golden statues were found 
and also those of the Nereids. The king 's palace, too, stood 
on this acropolis beside the great temple, although many 
temples and many palaces in other Atlantean cities were 
soon in process of exploration and graphic restoration, to- 
gether with many other baildings, so that in a word the 
learned world was able in a few years to form a rather defi- 
nite idea of the way in which the Atlanteans lived and of 
their social, industrial and religious life. The great canal, 
3,000 miles long, that encircled the vast central plane, was 
also preserved sufficiently at many points to enable scholars 
to reconstruct the whole, and there was a most intricate 
system of bridges and roads and countless other things of 
which the Platonic myth gives us no hint. Thus the world 
was able to resurrect from its long watery grave a sunken 
civilization that in many respects far surpassed any other 
the world has ever seen. 

For two decades the work of excavation went on, with 
ever richer and new discoveries, and all mankind stood 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 13 

aghast to find that these ancient people not only knew 
every art and science of our own day but had far surpassed 
us. No soil ever began to be so rich. Gold, silver, and 
every kind of precious stones were as common as copper; 
or fine quartz is to-day. Half of this sunken continent: 
island was underlaid with rich, deep strata of the finest 
coal the use of which had been mainly superseded. Every 
kind of transportation, even by air, was highly developed. 
There were great seats of learning and societies of savants, 
vast libraries and museums, amusement palaces, forums for 
games, assembly halls, and vast power-houses which gener- 
ated electricity for every use, domestic, industrial, and 
public. Illiteracy was unknown. Eugenics had long been 
so organized that parenthood could be licensed only after 
a medical and psychic examination. Hygiene was so highly 
developed, too, that the average length of life was nearing 
one hundred years. There was little social or industrial 
loss from illness, so that the sick or invalided were always 
subjected to suspicion. In stature the men averaged about 
seven inches taller than those of our tallest races, the 
Swedes and Patagonians, and the women were models of 
symmetry and beauty. To keep oneself always at the 
top of one's condition was the central item of their code 
of ethics. Once a year every child and adult must strip, 
be tested, and examined to see if he was maintaining his 
own, or gaining in knowledge, health, and virtue, and he 
was disfranchised and barred from parenthood if he fell 
below the standard, for human quality was a cofactor with 
numbers in augmenting the power of the state. 

Crete was the capital and emporium of the Atlantean J 
colony of Europe, Tyre of her Asiatic, Sais of her African \ 
colonies, and Quito, the home of the predecessors of the ■ 
Peruvian Incas, who then ruled all South America, was a 
dependency from which heavy tribute was derived. China 
was, next to Egypt, the richest and most powerful of her 



14 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

provinces. Japan and North America were then but 
sparsely populated and negligible in the world policy of 
Atlantean statesmanship, although the Ainos and once 
powerful but now extinct Boethuk Indians of Northeast 
America had traditions of her greatness, and these coun- 
tries were often visited by her pioneers and explorers. 
Thus this colossal and magnificent empire ruled the world, 
and all our scattered traditions of a golden age and of 
Paradise that Pfleiderer has collected and which Warren 
wrongly placed near the North Pole, when it was more 
tropical, were only faintly reminiscent of Atlantis in her 
glory. 

As these discoveries proceeded, contemporary man the 
world over was slowly compelled to a more modest idea 
of himself and his boasted progress. He came to realize 
that he had been surpassed at every point by ancient and 
forgotten people, that he was only a crude apprentice to 
life, that better things than he had ever dreamed had al- 
ready happened, but also that there had somehow been a 
great fall only very crudely symbolized by the myth of 
Eden, or by the deluge which Plato said engulfed Atlantis. 
Some began to wonder whether the old legend of eternal 
recurrence, which had so obsessed the mind of poor Nietz- 
I sche, might not be true. Perhaps there was a great cosmic 
cycle of 24,000 years, after which the slate of history had 
been wiped clean and everything repeated itself almost in 
the same order as before. Perhaps man was destined to toil 
painfully upward until he reached a certain maximum of 
culture and civilization and then was doomed to decline to 
barbarism, and in time to start upward again with new 
stirps as the organ of a new Zeitgeist that was really the 
old one disguised, slowly turning the secular wheel of fate. 
During each cosmic day the great Knitter was always knit- 
ting her marvelous web, which each morning saw unraveled 
during the night, and so it would be in saecula saeculorum, 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 15 

while the gods looked on and laughed at the poor fool they 
had created for their delectation. What a comedy it must 
all be to them ! But some of the best of us could and would 
not accept this logic of despair. We felt that man could 
and must now beat the gods at their own game. By these 
discoveries we tore aside the watery curtain they had inter- 
posed between successive eons. We had found out the 
sponge they used to erase the tablets of history which myth 
has always called a deluge. We now could see that this was 
all done by alternating sea and land. In one eon the sea- 
bottom became dry land, and in the next the land surface 
became the sea-bottom. Now that we can command knowl- 
edge of both, we **are on'' to the great secret of the gods. 
If we can only find out why the glory of the Atlantean era 
faded, we may be able to find the antidote for the malady. 
Very likely all the Atlanteans (for there may have been a 
long series of them) died of the same disease, and, if so, 
what was it and is there anywhere any cure, or even any 
nepenthe ? If so, and if we can find or compose one, there 
may at last be a kingdom of man that will be at least ter- 
restrially immortal, as the bee and ant state (which have 
long preceded and now promise as long to outlast man) 
almost are. He will surely sometime grow tired of ever re- 
peating the weary seesaw way, marching up the hill with 
ten thousand men like the general of nursery tales only to 
march down the same hill again. 

This was the momentous question so pregnant and fateful 
for the future of the human race, which was often long 
discussed in the international conventions of savants who 
presided over these great discoveries, and it was this prob- 
lem of why Atlantis fell that was at last assigned to a large 
committee of specialists, of which I was made chairman. 
We had long ago discovered the vast and hermetically rock- 
sealed central and official library and state records, all the 
more important volumes of which were printed by inden- 



16 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

tation on thin and flexible leaves of gold in characters so 
microscopically small that we first thought the sheets 
blank. These we had with great pains and expense mag- 
nified and photographed and after years of study found the 
key to read, reconstructing even this deadest of all dead 
languages. The details of all these efforts and their results 
and interpretations will themselves constitute many vol- 
umes of fascinating interest which will amaze the world 
when this committee reports in full. Suffice it to say that 
the Atlantean language itself was proved to have been by 
far the most flexible expression which the human psyche 
ever evolved. The dictionary of one of its academies in 
forty volumes contained about one and one-half million 
words, its grammar was more sj^stematic and logical than 
that of any language of our era, and its phonic resources 
exhausted every physiological possibility of the organs of 
speech. Doubtless the Atlanteans would have laughed to 
hear us speak their tongue, as we slowly learned to do after 
a fashion, but it was really so apt and expressive that we 
tended to use it more and more, until some of us came to 
feel that our own tongue was vulgar and crude by compari- 
son, as we developed a real Sprachgefiihl for it. But I 
must really leave all this and scores of other fascinating 
and momentous discoveries aside as irrelevant and adhere 
to those with which my own committee was charged, al- 
though I am permitted even here at present to set forth 
only a few of the main essentials, pending a far fuller 
account. 

' In the acme of her power Atlantis had slowly developed 
V/i .toward syndicalism. All interests, including industries, 
' grew more and more highly organized. Each had its local 
and its central board in an ascending hierarchy. Each was 
represented in a municipal, state, and national legislative 
council. Laborers whose conditions would seem to us in 
every way ideal, capitalists and employers, doctors, priests, 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 17 

farmers, keepers and distributors of stores and goods, 
women, artists, teachers, engineers, actors, and, in short, 
each great calling became, as we shall see, a guild intent 
upon its own interests instead of, as in the golden age, 
upon the public good alone. In a word, and to anticipate 
all that followed, the fall of Atlantis illustrated the general 
principle that those who begin by loving their own country 
better than they love mankind will sooner or later lapse 
to the next lower stage, in which they love their own party 
better than their country^, their own sect better than re- 
ligion, and will then proceed to prefer their own group in- 
terests, economic or social, to party or creed, and will end 
by loving themselves better than all else. The Nemesis of 
hyperdemocratization is the hyperindividuation it always 
brings. All this can best be set forth if we briefly outline 
a few salient features of this decline in a number of the 
leading guilds or Soviets. Let us begin with that of the 
doctors. 

ni 

THE CULT OF HEALTH AND ITS DECLINE 

In the day of its greatest glory physicians came near 
illustrating the maxim which may have been suggested to 
Hippocrates, whom we call the father of medicine, by some 
not quite extinct tradition of Atlantis: '^ Godlike is the 
doctor who is also a philosopher. ' ' In fact, philosophy cul- 
minated in keeping the body, politic, social, and personal, 
at the topnotch of its condition. Indeed every institution, 
habit, and vocation was graded for its ultimate value ac- 
cording to what it contributed to this supreme end of man. 
They had a maxim which survived even to the time our 
New Testament was written and which Jesus reproduced 
in corrupt form. It was, ' * What shall it profit a man if he 
gain the whole world and lose his own health, or what shall 



18 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

a man give in exchange for health?*' Health was virtue, 
and the temple of its god, Keepup, was quite as splendid, 
far larger and more frequented than that of Neptune it- 
self. In place of altare there were baths ; in place of sacred 
music there were sacred dances; and the chief room in 
the temple was what we should call a gymnasium, and the 
shrine was a series of testing offices. 

Every one had to join the National Health Insurance 
Organization, to the administration of which in all its 
many bureaus and complex details a large staff of medical 
officers gave all their time. Every one paid a monthly rate 
if he was at the top of his condition, while if he fell below 
his maximal efficiency, his assessment to the medical guild 
was remitted, and if he was incapacitated by illness, the 
guild supported him and his family in the state of living 
to which they were accustomed until recovery was com- 
plete. No one was allowed to labor with mind or body un- 
less he was at the top of his condition, and even every 
workman's card had to be stamped by a health officer, after 
a brief examination, each day as he entered the shop, fac- 
tory or office. All individual medical treatment was, of 
course, gratuitous, and it was thus for the interests not 
only of the doctor's profit but for his convenience that all 
his hygienic parishioners should be well. Thus the pre- 
vention of disease was far more highly developed than 
therapy. One group of medics examined all children 
within three days of their birth, and if they were con- 
vinced according to certain formulae that by reason of 
defect, inherited disease, or congenital weakness or predis- 
position to crime they were destined to be a burden to 
society and to themselves, these children suffered painless 
extinction and mothers were exhorted in this matter to 
accept the inevitable with joy as in the interests of the 
state. Most of them were Spartan enough to do so, al- 
though occasionally an exhausted or disordered young 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 19 

mother in the privacy of her own apartment would give 
way to paroxysms of grief. To refuse or resist this decree 
of the guardians of the blood of the tribe wfis incipient 
treason. 

Physicians, too, had to examine and certificate all candi- 
dates for marriage, and here they formulated not only an 
elaborate code of laws but another less mandatory one of 
advice and warnings which was taught to all children at 
puberty. Sex diseases vere almost unknown, and if a 
case appeared it was isolated and penalized if it were 
proved to have been culpably contracted, although even 
innocent victims of accident were permanently barred from 
all future relations with the other sex. Bad habits and all 
forms of perversity in this field were ruthlessly eradicated, 
for the ancient Atlanteans were already well on the way 
toward reducing man's hypertrophied sex functions down 
to or toward the models of procreation set us by the animal 
world, for eugenics was not only a science but an art and 
almost a religion. It was under the influence of this guild 
that these people had attained not only their superior 
stature, weight, and symmetry but also their longevity. 
Thus the laws of sanitation and hygiene were everywhere 
supreme, and in exigencies superseded all others. Physi- 
cians not only inspected every individual home, workshop, 
office, mine, latrine, etc., periodically, enforcing everywhere 
standards for light, air, and cleanliness, but they examined 
all foods and drinks, condemning and destroying ruthlessly 
all that fell below the requirements. Purity, the nutritive 
and thermal values of each staple food, were well under- 
stood, for they were taught in the schools, and suggestions 
were given every person according to his occupation and 
constitution as to which way he might vary from the 
dietetic norm. Every infraction of any of these laws was 
almost sure to be found out and penalized. By these 
methods even wine-bibbing, tendencies to which had never 



20 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

been entirely eradicated, was sometimes found to a degree 
that needed very special attention. 

Antiseptic surgery had far surpassed its highest achieve- 
ments under the civilization of to-day. Organs and limhs 
from fresh cadavers could be indefinitely preserved in cold 
storage and kept in readiness to graft on to those who were 
in need of them. Transplantation not only of kidneys, 
liver, and all the endocrine glands, but even of lungs and 
in a few rare cases of the heart itself had been successfully 
accomplished. It was not uncommon to rear infants in 
incubators if the mothers were found deficient in physio- 
logical resources or in maternal care. In certain very 
choice experiments the male and female cells had been 
developed in artificial media to a certain point, and there 
was great rivalry between the foremost investigators of 
each sex as to which of them would first develop com- 
pletely a true homunculus without the cooperation of the 
other sex. It was believed that all the noxious bacteria by 
whose permission human life continues on this globe were 
known and that antitoxins had been discovered or invented 
for them all. In all the centers of medical research a great 
many animals, large and small, were of course in constant 
use as media for the development of different therapeutic 
agents. The chief Atlantean cities, in a word, had become 
so spotless and hygienic that the very phagocytes which 
act as scavengers in the human blood became degenerate 
and almost extinct for lack of exercise. In extreme cases 
it was possible to sustain life for a long time when the 
entire alimentary tract was thrown out of gear by injection 
of prepared chyle and chyme, and indeed there was a small 
group that hoped that eventually thus all the processes of 
digestion from mastication to at least the absorption of 
the lacteals and the pouring of their sugared-off products 
of digestion into the portal vein could be done in the labo- 
ratory and thus a large part of the total kinetic energy of 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 21 

the body freed for higher culture, when they believed a 
race that even Atlanteans regarded as supermen would be 
evolved. There were also guardians of sleep whose func- 
tion it was to determine upon a curfew for different classes 
and license those who had to be up later to do night work, 
and to maintain more or less tranquillity. It was also their 
function to pass upon all hours of labor, to prescribe vaca- 
tions and even recreations, all of which prescriptions had 
to be followed implicitly, and it was a part of the duty of 
these guardians to see that each citizen took a due and 
proper amount of physical exercise of the right kind with- 
out overdrawing his resources. They also had in their 
keeping the ultimate disposal of all corpses after the 
funeral rites were over ''for the greatest good of the com- 
munity" — so ran the law. Some, of course, went to the 
medical schools and laboratories, others were dismembered 
to supply organs for transplantation, and from others 
certain compounds which could nowhere else be quite so 
successfully made were extracted from different organs for 
various scientific and commercial uses. Vivisection experi- 
ments were licensed upon all forms of animal life and occa- 
sionally upon condemned criminals guilty of heinous 
crimes, although such occasions were of very rare occur- 
rence. There were also bureaus for statistical and other 
studies upon the various conditions that could be controlled 
for large groups of the community in the interests of social 
hygiene. Many investigations, too, had been made upon 
the kind and amount of food and drink determined by age, 
sex, temperament, alimentary type, and occupation. 
Sanity was given a wide range and was individually deter- 
mined, for there were few insane, so that medical juris- 
prudence had not had occasion to lay down a general canon 
but, recognizing the vast diversity of symptoms here, made 
decisions of compos mentis only after careful individual 
study of each case. These wise law-givers desired to de- 



22 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

velop a wide range of idiosyncrasies and the utmost license 
of opinion and tolerance of very manifold creeds, prac- 
tices, and fashions because they deemed that uniformity, 
monotony, and the tyranny of custom were on the whole 
degenerative. This, in general, was the status, and these 
were some of the achievements of perhaps the most impor- 
tant of all the professions at the most exalted point of its 
development that it has ever reached in the world. 

But as time went on, individuals and then communities 
became lax in the payment of their health insurance rates. 
"Why, they said, should we who are well be taxed for the 
benefit of those who are ill? Let only those who need 
physicians support them. This heresy, despite its denun- 
ciations as incipient treason to the state, spread apace. 
The resources of the guilds gradually fell off and thus its 
efficiency decreased. Others resented the eugenic control 
of wedlock and broached the view that each pair should 
take their own mating into their own hands. Their laws 
against kissing, which required that this must always be 
done only after the application of what the "slanguage'* 
of popidar resentment described as "smooch-paper," which 
instantly recorded in different colors the presence of all 
noxious bacteria or kissing bugs in the mouth or throat 
somewhat as litmus paper now records the presence of acid 
or alkali, were popular objects of ridicule. Conscientious 
objectors against the physical examinations which had to 
precede marriage arose. Red and radical resistance was 
organized in secret clubs formed here and there which 
defied the curfew laws and protested the individual right 
to turn night into day. Consumptives insisted that they 
were victims of circumstances and not responsible for their 
malady as under the old laws. Objection, too, was taken 
to the fact that physicians kept themselves first of all so 
well that most of them had never had any experience with 
any form of illness or invalidism, which was so essential for 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 23 

sympathy with the sick. Others demanded more freedom 
to dispose of their dead where and in any way they saw 
fit not detrimental to the public health. Doctors, strait- 
ened in their resources, began gradually first to accept and 
then to exact fees from the sick, to the dismay of their 
more conservative colleagues who thought that it was as 
preposterous and demoralizing to sell drugs and advice as 
Plato later thought it was for the sophists to sell wisdom 
or for teachers to take pay for imparting knowledge. As 
this demoralization advanced, patent medicines, private 
hospitals and asylums developed, and their proprietors 
made profits out of the misfortunes and disasters of the 
members of the community instead of as before from their 
health and prosperity. Thus, as unhygienic conditions in- 
creased and preventative activities declined and diseases 
multiplied, the profession grew for a time in importance 
and in power but on a lower plane, for cure now and not 
superlative condition became profitable. It was indeed not 
for the physician's interest to cure but to keep his patient 
ill, and if he could not do that, to make him think himself 
in need of medical service; and so adepts arose in. the art 
of making women and especially adolescent girls and boys 
imagine that normal processes were alarming symptoms. 
Thus this powerful profession which had been the corner- 
stone of the prosperity of the state lapsed as individual 
practitioners now came to sense chiefly their own private 
personal interests. The people as a whole slowly grew 
debilitated or nearly all fancied themselves to be more or 
less impaired. Scores of crude practices and superstitions 
arose, and there were also proprietary and patent medicines 
everywhere, some positively noxious, others only stimulants 
disguised by misleading names, and still others entirely 
neutral, which came to be thought helpful, while some 
grew superstitious and developed senseless phobias of 
germs. If one drank an innocent glass of wine, there was 



24 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

fear of the red and angry drunkard's stomach now some- 
times represented in our school textbooks of physiology. 
Those rebels who restored the old habit of smoking were 
threatened with the bogy of a tobacco heart. If one drank 
from a country spring from a glass not his own or at the 
communion table of the goddess Hygeia without his in- 
dividual cup, the doctors did their utmost to make him feel 
that he was in immediate need of their care. The dread of 
infection by carriers in air, water, and by contact was 
stimulated to the utmost degree and had to be defied by 
those adventurous souls who often successfully and tri- 
umphantly violated the official prescriptions in these 
regards. 

It was at this stage that the physicians, after much dis- 
cussion, standardized their fees, although for this no rules 
proved entirely effective, for there were always those who 
exacted exorbitant fees from the rich and refused all serv- 
ices to the poor if there was any reason to doubt their 
ability to pay. It was at this period, too, that excessive 
specialization was developed and physicians arose who 
treated only the diseases of the eye, ear, nose and throat, 
womb, heart, nerves, stomach, intestines, and did so quite 
regardless of the condition of the patient's sj^stem as a 
whole, while general medicine declined until practitioners 
in this field were almost unknown. Thus things went on 
for generations, and the decay of hygiene brought many 
other evils in its train and cooperated in subtle ways with 
degenerative processes that were also going on in other 
domains. The mortality increased fastest among the poor 
because infections were unchecked and the rich could still 
pay for more or less adequate care. The expense, too, of 
having a baby born in the family was at one time almost 
prohibitive save among the wealthy, where the fewest, as a 
matter of fact, were bom. Laws were passed which sought 
to compel all to summon a doctor of the authorized medical 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 25 

guild upon the appearance of any of a long list of symp- 
toms — laws which were so generally resisted that the more 
they were multiplied, the less effective they became. Mean- 
while the doctors themselves grew ever more arrogant, op- 
pressive, and often extortionate, and the profession had 
become so attractive that its numbers had greatly increased 
until there was one to every sixty of the population, from 
whom they must live. 

This was the state of things when the first manifesta- 
tions of the great revolt appeared. First in certain city 
wards populated by the poor, and then in rural communi- 
ties, the movement spread and was organized. There were 
meetings, private and even public, protests and finally reso- 
lutions with more and more signatures, pledging each signer 
to use every means to evade the tyranny of the medical 
guild. At the same time there came a great recrudes- 
cence of vulgar or popular home-cures, and the use of 
herbs, nostrums, and superstitious practices abounded. 
The people regarded it as one of the inalienable rights of 
man to take flight to illness occasionally if one desired to 
do so, and even to die unattended by the minions of this 
prying and obnoxious profession. Hygienic freedom or 
death was a many-voiced cry. There were broadsides, 
posters, tracts, pamphlets galore, uprisings, raids, windows 
of doctors' houses were broken and their offices looted, and 
sabotage of much of the armamentarium of medical prac- 
tice. During all this time there was, of course, great and 
growing suffering on both sides. Many doctors abandoned 
their vocation and sought others. Many were in the direst 
need and had to be supported by the contributions of their 
more prosperous guild brethren, but even these were grow- 
ing poorer, for the rich began to catch the infection and 
realize the impositions and extortions to which they had 
been subjected. 

Thus, at last goaded to desperation, the entire brother- 



26 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

iood of Atlantean physicians, after careful deliberation, 
called a kohar, which is the equivalent of our word 
** strike,'* hoping thus to bring the people to their senses 
and to a realization of their dependence. Upon a given 
day set in advance, every office, every medical school and 
hospital was closed. Nurses and druggists some days later 
joined in a sympathetic kohar. No words can describe the 
Iiorrors and suffering that ensued. Patients in institutions 
were left to die or to be removed by their friends, one 
-epidemic after another raged unabated, no medicine was 
available save such therapeutic plants as could be gathered 
from the fields or concocted or brewed at home. Under- 
takers were busy and their guild grew and prospered. The 
well cared for the sick in a neighborly way, and thus there 
was a great increase of mutual sympathy and aid, especially 
at first, for it was gradually realized that on the whole it 
was the less fit that perished and the best that survived. 
But the death rate slowly declined as selective agencies 
began to operate. There were thus compensations. Some 
of the rich realized that medical attendance was a luxury 
that could be dispensed with in many cases, and there were 
invalids who recovered and came to feel that they had been 
kept ill for profit. Mutual help in illness brought people 
nearer together and there were more precautions, and the 
intelligent public sentiment strongly resisted the tendency 
to lapse toward the crude methods of the witch doctors 
and exorcisers. Here and there doctors of the old school 
stiU surreptitiously practiced their arts and there were 
many people who clandestinely invoked their assistance in 
emergencies, despite the denunciation of them by public 
sentiment as helaks, which is the equivalent of our ' * scab. ' ' 
It was a long and tragic story of boycott, lockout, injunc- 
tion, with many a brawl, raid, and sabotage, for neither 
party would yield, and as the net result of all this age-long 
struggle the healing art was almost annihilated in Atlantis, 



THE FALL OP ATLANTIS 27 

all the institutions that advanced men's knowledge of the 
human frame had ceased to function, while the health and 
stamina of the people had greatly declined. The people 
ate, drank, married, procreated, went filthy or clean as each 
wished. They applied quarantine, isolation, inoculation 
against infectious diseases or not, as each local community 
decreed. ** Hygienic freedom,'* ** break the fetters of the 
tyrant, sanitation," ''real health is happiness," ''the 
good old cures are the best," "individual liberty insures 
the greatest good of the greatest number, ' ' — ^such were the 
popular slogans. There were itinerant healers followed by 
crowds which sometimes trampled on each other for a 
touch or look. Fanatic sects even denied the existence of 
disease, deeming it a hallucination of the carnal mind too 
encumbered by mortal flesh. Others thought prayer or the 
laying on of hands would banish bacteria or paralyze them 
in the midst of their destructive work, and there were 
miracle-working fakirs who set bones, imparted glame or 
*'neuricity" from nervous systems supercharged with it 
by passes, touching sensitive zones, massage, etc., for those 
who liked it, while others used magic unguents and even 
words and formulae. Exercisers, casters of horoscopes, 
water, air, colored-light and all kind of electric and X-ray 
cures and tonics abounded. Swarthy foreigners from the 
ends of the earth brought new rites or nepenthes. In some 
localities even scatological ceremonials were revived. Pre- 
^sculapian serpent-worship and witch broths, various 
types of elixir vitce, panaceas, plants found to bear the 
signatures of planets, healing lotions, holy shrines, relics, 
amulets, mascots, charms to ward off the evil eye, secret 
curses of enemies which could bring even murrain to cattle 
and mortal pestilence to man — all these were found, some 
in one, some in other provinces. Many turned to priests 
and sorceresses or other spiritual guides with the same 
faith and confessional abandon with which some neurotic 



28 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

modern women turn to their physicians as sanctity took 
the place of sanitation and even sanity, and thus with the 
decline of health the very foundations of personal and civic 
morale were undermined and superstition slowly settled 
down over all the domain once so highly and richly culti- 
vated by medical science. 

Corresponding with this gradual age-long decay of the 
arts that had so effectively conserved the life and health 
of Atlantis came similar degenerative processes in other 
fields, to the next of which we now turn. 

IV 

THE TRIUMPH AND FALL OF JUSTICE 

In the acme of her power Justice with all her institu- 
tions reigned supreme in Atlantis. There was a kind of 
Sanhedrin, Areopagus, or academy, election to which body 
carried with it the most honorific of all titles, or degrees, 
viz., that of sage, legislator, or sapri, than which no dis- 
tinction was more coveted. This body made all laws and 
at intervals codified them. From this final compilation as 
we now know it, it is very apparent that the stone tables 
of Moses which he was fabled to have brought down from 
Sinai, the codes of Hammurabi, Solon, Lycurgus, and many 
other antique formulations of man's duty and rights were 
fragmentary reminiscences of this older law, and from this, 
doubtless, came also the suggestions which prompted Plato 
to write his Republic and Aristotle his Politics, and which 
was in a psychogenetic sense the source of so many ideal 
states and communities with which we are familiar but are 
accustomed to treat as baseless fancies or ideals impossible 
of realization. These all now seem to be the offspring of 
vague and partial memories that have filtered down through 
the ages to us, not so much by tradition as by unconscious 
inheritance and submerged reminiscence from the politics 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 29 

and constitution of Atlantis. Thus it is that the vast 
domains of experience of man and also of his far back 
animal progenitors, when obliterated from all records of 
the race, leave as their most permanent and last-to-be- 
effaced trace a predisposition of the imagination to repro- 
duce their psychokinetic equivalents in forms thought to 
be original creations, just as the engrams of the great 
saurians and megatheria of the Trias age inclined the mind 
of man, eons after they were extinct, to make fables of 
draconian monsters slain by culture-heroes who unified 
peoples and founded states, like St. George, Siegfried, 
Perseus, Beowulf, because man's psyche and its organ, the 
brain, now inherit all the marvelous plasticity once shown 
best of all in the morphological plasticity of these most ^ 
polymorphic lacertilian forms, or finds another illustration I 
in our altitude psychoses and nightmares of hovering, in 
which we see reverberations in the soul of the piscine and 
pelagic life of our aquatic progenitors. 

The cult of justice in the palmiest days of Atlantis, with 
all its institutions, courts, judges, law-schools, etc., was 
based on the prime postulate that happiness and virtue, 
the chief of which was justice, and also on the other hand 
wickedness, the chief form of which was selfishness, and 
pain belong together and that they must be made to coin- 
cide in this world and not wait for their equation upon 
another life. Laws that should be *' written reason," and 
in obedience to which alone man could find complete free- 
dom, must be so drawn and so executed that each individual 
promptly gets his deserts, whether good or evil. 

Again, one function of lawyers which was designated by 
the term hwmor trcwi, which I translate as *'the apostolat© 
of the dead, ' ' was to pronounce judgment upon every life, 
whether that of pauper or king, at its close. Li other 
words, they must assess its net result in profit and loss for 
the community. Thus the moral of each individual career 



30 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

was drawn for the encouragement or warning of survivors. 
The problems which each faced, the secret acts of self- 
sacrifice, indulgences of greed or vice — all were explored 
and brought to light with clinical thoroughness and im- 
partiality. What were the chief temptations of each re- 
sisted or yielded to, the good resolutions kept or broken, 
the weakness or strength, service or disservice, — all these 
were exposed and given their true meed of praise or blame, 
with a kind of Rhadamanthian judgment-day impartiality. 
Thus everybody could look forward to his own ** death 
forum" and so regulate his life that his surviving friends 
would not execrate but cherish his memory with pride. 
Despite all this, however, it of course sometimes happened 
that estimates of character were reversed in this forum 
and those thought most desirable citizens were revealed as 
craven, hypocritical, and false-hearted, and perhaps even 
those that suffered social reprobation were shown forth as 
paragons of social and civil virtue. 

In economic life in the golden, sometimes called the 
Satumian age, all wealth was an expression and a measure 
of service and was prized by its possessor and respected by 
others solely as such and not for any intrinsic worth of its 
own or for what it could buy. In fact, the term for both 
money and wealth, sema-cur, meant *' service measure- 
Inent." It was dishonorable to possess a wdnu (nearly 
equivalent to our dollar) that was not earned or bought 
and paid for by service. Thus it was that the bad citizen 
was poor and the good rich. To be proved to possess a 
tainted minu or semOhcur was disloyalty to society and was 
punished by confiscation of twentyfold by the state. 
Enterprise consisted in finding new kinds of service or 
extending old ones. The more essential the undertaking, 
the greater became each man's service-wealth. All great 
corporations were cooperative and animated by the same 
ideals. If, as happened here and there, degenerates be- 



THE FALL OP ATLANTIS 31 

came animated by get-rich motives, the courts investigated, 
and if they found this to be the case, they pronounced the 
culprit '^ undesirable " and left him to the condemnation 
of his conscience and to the outlawry of his fellow-men. 
He was, however, often allowed to keep his wealth and thus 
to become an object-lesson to the community that those 
who amassed riches, however great, by unworthy means 
were not respected but contemptible. Plato and the Stoics 
later taught that the tyrant who was bad, selfish, and mean, 
even though rich, thought great and good, and overwhelmed 
with honors, was in his secret heart miserable; while the 
man with a meTis conscia< sihi recti or an approving con- 
science, although thought wicked, despised, persecuted, and 
even martyred, was in his inmost heart happy and trium- 
phant. On the same principle an Atlantean diplomated 
*' undesirable" nearly always, sooner or later, came to 
realize his unworthiness and found surcease from his self- 
condemnation by voluntarily pauperizing himself and 
starting over again by way of civic regeneration and atone- 
ment, and thus found sources of a new and deep satisfac- 
tion which had been concealed to him before. 

Nearly all forms of what we call crime existed but were 
very rare. Punishments were, so far as possible, made to 
fit the crime. Fraud was punished by a tenfold restitution. 
One who violated his oath was, if this habit was proved 
chronic, branded and tattoed on either cheek with the 
letter *'G" for guma, or liar. Murderers were put to 
death by the same method they had used upon their vic- 
tims carefully elaborated, and the same method was used 
for every kind of mayhem on the eye-f or-eye, tooth-f or-tooth 
principle. Those who became victims of overweaning 
pride were subjected to a curriculum of indignities and 
humiliations. Many methods of correcting faulty disposi- 
tions, far excelling in ingenuity although instinct with the 
same spirit which animates many of our college fraternity 



32 RECREATIONS OP A PSYCHOLOGIST 

and secret-society initiations in their often drastic and 
cruel mental and even physical pains, were evolved, always 
with a correspondence between the fault and the cure, that 
outdid Dante's Infernal and Purgatorial methods. Thus 
the tender were toughened; the boorish made mannerly; 
the opinionated, dogmatic, and self-complacent made do- 
cile; the cranky given the spirit of teamwork and com- 
promise; the egoist taught that there were other men and 
minds; the feeble and dependent were given more oak and 
iron in their composition, etc. Those it was found neces- 
sary to isolate for a season were treated with a view to 
their reformation, for such and all sentences were not vin- 
dictive but curative in their aim. These moral hospitals 
for weak and perverted wills had each a corps of experts 
who prescribed a distinct regimen for each patient, rang- 
ing all the way from the severest physical castigation to 
the gentlest persuasion, for besides the determination of 
the temibility point of each inmate, which decided the ex- 
tremes of the drasticness of treatment for those nearest the 
line of incorrigibility, it was the good motivations latent or 
possible in each that were chiefly appealed to. For the 
very few cEises that resisted all treatment and for whom 
all hope of ultimate restoration to society it began to seem 
necessary to abandon, first castration, and, as a last resort, 
death was prescribed, for it was thought better that one 
member of the body politic, civic, or industrial, should 
perish than that the whole be corrupted. Emasculation 
was also sometimes resorted to for seducers, for all those 
who violated the spirit that in our day has made the Mann 
law, also for the lascivious and adulterers even if they 
were not diseased, and a corresponding operation was re- 
sorted to in emergencies for depraved and vampire women. 
In the great schools of law the spirit of justice, honor, 
and equity was inculcated, and all students took a solemn 
oath to be always and everywhere upholders of these prin- 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 33 

ciples and to be guardians of the spirit and tlie letter of 
the Atlantean constitution. Ethics was the basal study, 
and to these faculties drafts of each new law proposed were 
submitted to see if it conformed to the supreme principles 
of virtue between man and man. Whether the passion of 
the Hebrew prophets for righteousness was the survival of 
a dim tradition of Atlantis or a spontaneous recrudescence 
of the same principle under another racial dispensation, wei 
have so far not been able to determine, but there is at least 
many a striking similitude between the two. Another 
function of these schools was to collect and compare model 
charters for cities, states, corporations, and other institu- 
tions and organizations of all kinds which serve the public 
welfare, to select and advise all movements seeking to in- 
stitute themselves of the most effective and successfully 
tried-out methods, and finally also to warn against those 
methods which experience had proved faulty and ineffec- 
tive. Here, too, was to be found a collection of all the con- 
stitutions of all the states that had existed from the begin- 
ning of the Atlantean cycle of history which culminated 
in the evolution of this great commonwealth, whether demo- 
cratic, oligarchical, monarchical, or syndical, etc., and the 
perpetual problem of the savants who investigated and 
taught in this department was to work out in ever greater 
perfection ways that conserved most of the merits and 
avoided most of the defects of them all, for the best state 
was that which most exactly fitted the nature and best 
satisfied all the legitimate needs of man. 

Government was thus an art, a science, and a profession. 
All the many colonies of Atlantis were administered for 
their own good, for it was well realized that their pros^ 
perity and that of the central state were one and insep- 
arable. The status of every race under this wide jurisdic- 
tion was carefully studied, and pioneers for the mother 
state were always teachers and anthropologists. There was 



34 RECREATIONS OP A PSYCHOLOGIST 

thus no antagonism to indigenous beliefs and customs, and 
those less civilized were not brought to shame in the pres- 
ence of those more so, but rather strove to emulate them. 
Absurd beliefs and deleterious customs were thus left to 
die slowly of neglect and inanition as more and better ideas 
and practices supervened. Thus all primitive cults and 
religions that had contained in them higher possibilities, 
as indeed nearly all did, were carefully conserved and 
slowly refined by suggestion, for it was seen that every 
faith and rite, however crude, had in it the germs of the 
highest. This was as if we in our day should see and say 
that Jesus gave us only an example of how one old and 
once grand, but then decadent, faith could be made to 
blossom into a new and better one, and that by a similar 
method any of the sons of men who to-day had the capacity 
thus to incubate any one of the great faiths or the more 
or less systematized superstitions of even the lowest races 
could make stand forth revealed all that lay con- 
cealed in them. The products of these various incubations 
and palingeneses would differ much in form from Chris- 
tianity but would agree with it in the chief essential of all 
religions that man's prime function is to serve man and 
God, who is only Mansoul personified. In this spirit the 
Atlantean masters and doctors of law sought in their 
colonial policy never to eradicate but only to develop and 
perfect the religious and cultural tendencies implicit in 
the hearts and souls of the members of all their colonial 
dependencies, a policy that always and everywhere justifies 
itself. 

The elements of the laws and of morality were taught 
in every school, and with the highest morale, which con- 
sists in closing the chasm between knowing and doing; 
knowledge that did not issue in virtue was thought to be 
an evil and not a good. In the universities the nature of 
man was the culminating study, and so to organize the 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 35 

good and the true within that each individual should be a 
self -controlled whole or unity was the goal, for the best, 
preparation for ruling others is to know how to rule one- 
self. Such was the ethical-legal state of Atlantis at its 
best. 

But as wealth accumulated, men tended, as they always 
do, to decay. The yeoman citizenry had long owned and 
tilled each his own spot of dear old Mother Earth and had 
felt the inspiration of standing in the center of his own 
homestead, however small, and realizing that everything 
comprised within its circle, however narrow, from zenith 
to nadir was his own. But now and then, here and there, 
precious stones, coal or metals were found, some land was 
rich and some poor, and it was perhaps this fact that 
marked the beginning of the degeneration of the sense of 
justice and all the evils that always trek in its train. As 
some grew rich their neighbors grew jealous. The fortu- 
nate said their finds rendered a real service, while others 
accused them of monopolizing the natural resources which 
belonged to all, and the profits of which they had not really 
earned, and it was in this controversy, after the old methods 
of adjustment and arbitration had failed, that each side to 
the dispute found administrators of justice, who had 
hitherto been officials of the state and paid only from the 
public coffers, becoming advocates representing opposing 
views and claims and each receiving private fees, to the 
great scandal of their colleagues. From such beginnings 
it was that the first civil courts, which were those of claims, 
arose. Before this all lawyers had been essentially judges 
gathering evidence as best they could personally, or by 
agents directly from the parties interested, but now they 
found it convenient to hear the pros and cons set forth by. 
agents on each side employed by the litigants, disreputable 
as these new sophisters of legality were in their efforts 
often to make the worse appear the better reason. For 



36 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

several centuries Atlantis had a period of unprecedented 
material prosperity, and new sources of wealth were opened 
at home and in all her wide-flung dependencies. But it 
was found impossible to keep this new wealth distributed 
according to the old principles of merit and service, so 
that with increasing litigation, venality grew apace and 
advocates multiplied and came to replace the older repre- 
sentatives of the law who were intent only upon justice. 
So numerous did these meyhus, or shysters become that 
many of them, in order to live, had to resort to methods of 
ferreting out possible cases and inciting contented people 
to engage in lawsuits to enforce fancied and even fictitious 
rights or to repel no less fancied wrongs. Thus misunder- 
standings, enmity, envy, and suspicion often arose where 
formerly peace and tranquillity had reigned. Hence, too, 
it slowly came to pass that any man in any way conspicu- 
ous, whether for merit or for wealth, had always to employ 
defenders against attack either upon his good name or 
upon his possessions, and to safeguard his fiduciary inter- 
ests as these developed in range and importance. 

As time went on, things grew worse and it was found 
necessary to enact new laws, for many of the older, simpler, 
sterner ones were found inconvenient and either lapsed or 
were abolished. Thus new legislative leaders, many of 
whom had had no training but who called themselves 
tribunes of the people, were convened in a central, and in 
many local parliaments. These members were elected from 
every walk of life, and a new type of special law-giving 
was developed beside the older one, thus slowly superseding 
the old faculties and the central academy of justice. 
Nearly all of their work was emergency legislation, and 
each member of these new bodies served only the interests 
of the constituents whose mouthpiece he was. Hence the 
body of laws was enormously multiplied far beyond the 
possibility of codification, and thus, too, precedents for 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 37 

judicial decisions could be found for almost anything that 
any litigant sought. No one could begin to survey the 
entire field, and so experts and specialists of manifold kinds 
arose who knew little of the enactments passed in any other 
field than their own. Of old, parties were unknown save 
that men naturally fall into conservative or progressive 
groups according to their temperaments. But now par- 
tisanship often eclipsed patriotism, and the very word 
politician became opprobrious. All questions were treated 
with a view to their value as capital for partisan success, 
and as public patronage grew in volume and public officials 
increased in numbers, there were ever more bickerings 
between the '*ins'^ and the ''outs'' who hoped to attain 
access to the public crib. This made true statesmanship 
something that was only traditional and no longer possible. 
The major elections kept all enterprises unsettled half the 
time. Platforms full of fine phrases and high-sounding 
platitudes were promulgated that abounded in pledges 
which were soon forgotten and never even meant to be 
fulfilled, and manipulators of public opinion developed 
who were clever enough to do what our democracy thinks 
impossible, viz., to fool all the people, everywhere, and all 
the time. Rules of procedures were so elaborated that 
clever parliamentarians could by their aid often throttle 
the will of the majority, and there were even filibusters 
who could at any time call a halt on all procedure. Many 
law-givers were in close rapport with financial centers that 
profited by their secret confidences, and many held large 
retainers from their clients or sold secrets to speculators. 
Lobbies arose that were more numerous, more astute, and 
better paid than their victims, and the latter were often 
even led to betray the very causes they were chosen to 
serve. Thus the fountains of justice became corrupt at 
their source and could give forth only muddy waters to 
those below. 



38 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

Vain were protests or petitions, especially where great 
interests were involved, as also were for a long time all 
efforts and plans of any kind of initiative, referendum, or 
recall, for in exact proportion to the length of term for 
which these servants of the people were chosen did they 
declare their independence of their constituents and arro- 
gate judgment and authority to themselves. 

It is hard to say from the records whether the infection 
of corruption spread fastest downward or upward. Cer- 
tain it is that lower and local civil bodies, also themselves 
with ever growing power and patronage, were composed of 
bosses and henchmen chiefly intent upon plunder, which 
generally came in the form of franchises, contracts, and 
concessions. No private business could have survived such 
mismanagement a year, and the ever-increasing taxes on 
everything made all governmental corporations rich beyond 
all precedent and therefore no less wasteful. Extortion, 
too, was everywhere rife. The police levied surreptitious 
rates or margins not only on crime and vice, which they 
too often protected instead of repressed, but also upon 
many an honest citizen and enterprise. If such perquisites 
were for any reason reduced, officials of all degrees, govern- 
ment clerks, firemen, policemen, transportation agents, and 
all the rest could always and everywhere have recourse to 
a strike and thus bring the long-suffering public to their 
terms. Capital and labor were long at angry odds, and 
their conflicts enormously reduced the industrial efficiency 
of the country. All processes became so specialized that 
no workman knew more than a single brief chapter in the 
history of the production of the object upon which he was 
engaged. Moreover, he was often obliged to live the whole 
course of his active life without adequate satisfaction of 
the primal needs of man, such as sufficient food, shelter, 
heat, clothes, family life, recreation, and so very commonly 
took refuge from his conscious and unconscious worries in 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 39 

drink, laws against which abounded but could no longer 
be enforced. 

There were many symptoms that anticipated the great 
revolt. First, in several remote rural localities, communi- 
ties were formed of families who undertook to make and 
administer their own laws. Some of these were composed 
of intelligent and cultivated men and women who longed 
to lead the simple life close to nature, feeling that urban 
life had grown too intricate and burdensome to be longer 
endured. A few were made up of what we should call 
religious fanatics. Others were dreamers of a new dis- 
pensation of civilization, etc. As these settlements were 
small, few, and far, they at first attracted little attention 
as they all recognized Caesar by paying their due tribute to 
him. They were open to all save lawyers, who were barred 
and banned. But rumor spread and exaggerated the 
charm of these modes of life. Visitors came and pro- 
nounced it good. Thus slowly a great new ideal arose and 
spread. **Let us," said the heralds of this ideal, *' reor- 
ganize our institutions from the bottom up. Let us again 
think and speak of man 's duties and not solely of his rights. 
This was the principle upon which the Atlantean state 
grew great at first, and to this we will hark back. The laws 
now,'^ they said, **have come well-nigh to destroying all 
liberty. They regulate our lives from the cradle to the 
grave — marriage, homes, children, food, drink, sleep, en- 
joyments, enterprise, traffic, etc., while every crop, dome?^ 
tic animal, vehicle, fare, ticket, article of dress or furniture, 
as well as everything found on the table, bin, or cellar, is 
taxed directly or indirectly, and prying, spying officials 
dog us in all that is done in kitchen, laundry, yard, bed- 
room, or street. They ferret out our incomes and expendi- 
ture, investigate our clubs and societies, report our utter- 
ances if they show any impatience at the state of things as 
they are.' 



)7 



40 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

So, at length, first secret, then open groups were formed 
pledging their members either not to elect lawyers to any 
body that made laws or ordinances or not to employ attor- 
neys or not to go to court but to arbitrate all differences, 
and sometimes individuals and even groups here and there 
agreed to defy certain laws of the more obnoxious type that 
infringed most seriously upon personal liberty or invaded 
human rights deemed inalienable. As this movement grew, 
many lawyers had to find new fields of activity as their 
resources were impaired. Others remonstrated and legis- 
lated voluminously against these recusant types, but to so 
little effect that these enactments ere long fell into dis- 
repute. The revenues of this guild fell off, and many 
turned to other vocations as the medicos had just before 
been similarly stampeded. 

As the last act of this drama, the legal body, goaded to 
'desperation, also decreed a kohar or strike, and thus at a 
given date all schools of law, courts, offices, and legislative 
bodies closed, and all patroUers of the streets and detec- 
tives ceased to function. Then, again, there was indeed 
acute distress. There were mobs, sabotage, looting in the 
street by night, and a large element of the population took 
delight in defying all the old restrictions and giving them- 
selves up for a time to an orgy of riot and dissipation. 
There were often disturbances that the soldier guild had 
to be invoked to suppress. Colonies once never taxed with- 
out representation were now levied on against their will, 
and revolted. Publicans once honest and respected became 
corrupt and hated. The press, once an endowed, impartial, 
and fearless oracle of public thought, fell under the control 
of advertisers and thus lost its freedom. One section of it 
became reptilian, venal, and subservient to the interests of 
its secret owners or those who bought its support. Some 
"widely circulated journals sank to mere scandalmonger ing 
and even blackmail; others catered to pestilent and trucu- 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 41 

lent bflge- water elements in society whom they thrilled and 
unsettled. Men prominent for service or wealth had often 
to employ *' sluggers'' to protect their person, and guard- 
ians facile with their tongues and pens to protect them 
against defamation. 

Everywhere there had been over-regimentation. Seats 
of learning as well as each profession or calling had tomes 
of statutes or ordinances, sometimes elaborately canonized, 
and were always in danger of being enmeshed in red tape 
or held up by antique precedents, for, as to-day, the passion 
for over-organization was greatest where there was least 
definiteness of purpose and least to organize; there was 
most regulation where there was least to regulate, and most 
circumlocutory functions where there was least to be 
accomplished. 

Thus, with the fall of the Nomos and Ethos, the nvores 
also declined. With the closing of all penal institutions 
and the abolition of all punishments every species of crime 
and vice so abounded that for years society seemed lapsing 
toward the state of Hobbesian war of all against all, and 
every man's hand seemed against that of every other. 
Neither life, limb, property, nor reputation was safe. Se- 
duction, rape, burglary, theft so increased that a reign of 
terror unprecedented in our era seemed imminent and a 
debacle of civilization itself at hand, as if man was not after 
all by nature a political animal, as our Aristotle has said, 
but a savage brute with whom the only law is that of the 
jungle where might makes right. Debauchery stalked the 
streets flagrant and unabashed. '* Because we die to-mor- 
row and the state and all future hope for man is dimmed, 
let us be merry and seize every pleasure while we can 
to-day, ' ' was the cry sometimes heard but oftener lived by. 

But amidst all this chaos there was a saving remnant that 
would not accept the grim logic of despair. Though all 
seemed lost, their wills were still unconquerable and they 



42 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

determined to meet fire with fire. As their first and mild- 
est tentative step they revived and placarded certain old 
precepts : "Do nothing to others you would not have them 
do to you/' a saw which survived in the negative golden 
rule of Confucius; *'Make the motives of thy conduct such 
that they could be maxims of the conduct of everybody," 
somewhat as our Kant later said: *'Be honest and keep 
yourself pure;'' *'"Walk humbly and be content;" "There 
remains always the simple life, which is after all the best ; ' ' 
''Avoid luxury which corrodes the heart;" "Be and keep 
always at your best;" "In doubt always find the higher, 
better way;" "Think twice;" "Be mindful of posterity;" 
"Seek always justice above all riches but practice mercy;" 
etc. Fortunately in such expressions of primal moral wis- 
dom the folklore of Atlantis was rich, and the best proverbs 
and apologues often represented in a phrase the choicest 
results of ages and experience. 

Ineffective as this placard and poster method seemed, 
it was a good beginning. But these wise men among 
fools also set to work systematically to compile, compare, 
and apply all ancient codes and tables of law and 
ethical systems, which were promulgated and diffused to 
show again the foundations upon which not only the 
Atlantean but all preceding civilizations had been built. 
Thus, canons of the primal rights and duties of man were 
conflated as books "in the bible of conduct." But all this 
was the least of this great effort to stem the tide of de- 
cay. Actively to combat present evils secret committees 
of vigilantes were formed, which occasionally marked out 
individuals for condign punishment, or even planned mys- 
terious executions for the most dangerous enemies of so- 
ciety and of virtue. There were law and order clubs. 
Codes and courts of honor were prescribed for workmen, 
employers, and for men of large and small affairs, to which 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 43 

many subscribed and from whom, if they refused to do so, 
those still loyal to the right withheld patronage and sup- 
port. Corps of volunteers taught and wrought for social 
betterment in streets, shops, alleys, and home. As these 
*'true citizens'' (for thus they were called) organized and 
cooperated, a state council was formed of delegates which 
promulgated, not laws enforced by tribunals but sugges- 
tions with no mandatory force but appealing solely to con- 
science and public spirit. Thus, slowly and faintly at first 
a new hope arose, for this movement had the incalculable 
advantage that it was after all only a revival of the spirit 
of Atlantis in her prime as against the later superfetation 
of legislation and administration of laws that strangled the 
spirit by the letter. Thus, in the last chapter of the his- 
tory of this guild regenerative forces seemed gaining 
ground over the moral, civic, and economic anarchy pre- 
cipitated by the revolt of the legal guild. But other causes 
of decay in other domains cooperated to bring the end, and 
no one can conjecture the fate of this splendid beginning of 
reconstruction here. This * ' sa\dor party, ' ' as it was called, 
was strongly agrarian and sought by every means to de- 
urbanize the population, and their ideal was that every 
family should own and till some tract of land, however 
small the plot of each. They also agreed in holding that 
all wealth and prosperity comes from labor, either of the 
head or of the hand, and that all those able should do some 
of both kinds of work daily. They deprecated and re- 
stricted the great and growing number of holidays, held 
that all great enterprises might be cooperative, and were 
bitter against both inherited and predatory wealth. All 
deprecated war, but accepted it as a sometimes necessary 
evil for which they must always be prepared. 

But in about all other things as these reformers gained 
influence and power, they differed, often so radically and 



44 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

irreconcilably that at the very last it seemed uncertain 
whether they could maintain the unity necessary to stem 
the tide of evils. We should caU them socialists, and then 
as well as now there were nearly as many minds as men, or 
at least types or dispositions of men. Some would achieve 
their goal by evolution ; others by revolution. Some would 
overturn society and bring up the proletariat to supreme 
power and humble all the rich, great, and powerful ; while 
others would eschew any program of vengeance for the past 
and simply start afresh. Some insisted that all were equal, 
and others recognized the vast native differences of gifts 
and would reward all according to service. Some favored, 
but most opposed, the development of any leisure class. 
There were pro- and anti-paternalists. Some would aggre- 
gate industries in guild towns, while others advocated a 
dispersive policy. Some desired to abolish all factory sys- 
tems and rely upon home industries wherever possible, while 
others evolved diverse systems of reform, and there were 
countless panaceas. Some held the right to strike inalien- 
able, and others would restrict it. Some feared great syji- 
dicates, and others believed in state ownership. So violent 
and sometimes disruptive were the wrangles between those 
who held opposite views that at the very last the powers of 
anarchy and chaos that these reformers had begun so effec- 
tively to check almost seemed to be again in the ascendant, 
so that as this chapter of Atlantean decline closes we are 
left in a really painful suspense between hope and fear for 
the future. Like the ''unfinished window of Aladdin's 
tower," however, the story of the future of this movement 
to supplant the legal guild must remain forever unfinished. 
Let us hope at least that our eon may last long enough so 
that if there should be similar issues at stake, the god of 
vTiistory that always repeats himself may finish his work 
with us, because thus only can we know whether man can 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 45 

truly domesticate or civilize himself, or whether he is 
doomed forever to fail at last, and whether, whatever their 
glory, the worlds he makes for himself must always end in 
disaster and shame. 

Y 
THE GLORY AND SHAME OF LEARNING 

If there was any domain in which the Atlantean race in 
its prime excelled all other races of man it seemed to have 
been in learning; at least her best traditions here appear 
to have left more of their dim vestiges and sporadic ideal 
outcrops in the form of dreams and wishes unfulfilled sug- 
gestive to us of a time when men should become really lords 
of creation and masters of their fate. We begin with some 
salient features of their methods of education. After the 
medicos had accepted the infant as having a privia fade 
right to live, as it were, in a probationary way, the mother 
of each was examined and her regimen prescribed con- 
formatory to an ancient precept that for the first year or 
two she is the best mother who is the best wet-nurse. She 
must handle and take personal care of her child, attend to 
its attire, and make this stage of animal parenthood, on 
which all its higher functions rest, complete. Mothers who 
performed all these functions best were endowed by the 
state and given a bonus for every well-bom child, so that 
each mother of four could live from this vocation. * ' Stirp 
inventories," which our baby-shows suggest, were held 
every year, at which each child up to the age of four years 
must be present and be carefully inspected by experts and 
graded on thirty points, with prizes for the best. Each 
parent had also to answer on oath certain intimate ques- 
tions and keep certain records, and these dual yearly re- 
ports were carefully filed as the first pages of a *'life and 
health book" thus begun at or before the birth of every 



46 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

child. By methods more developed than those of our so- 
called conditioned reflex, not only intelligence but temper 
and psychic diathesis could be rated during the first year 
of the infant 's life. The * ' mothers of the state ' ' were proud 
to wear the modest badge indicating their function and dur- 
ing the period of lactation they were regarded as vestals 
even by their husbands, and when they became gravid 
again, or even for the first time, there was no parturition- 
phobia, because there were always methods of twilight 
sleep more advanced than our own and proved innocuous in 
their results, although most mothers preferred to experience 
birth pangs, feeling that it made their parenthood more 
complete. The Atlanteans could not only analyze but com- 
pound mother's milk, as we cannot; but only imperfect 
mothers had recourse even to this for those who were nor- 
mal felt that even if nature's laboratory could be imitated, 
the very act of suckling their offspring made both the ma- 
ternal function and infants themselves more perfect, while 
in the case of those few infants who had thus to become 
** parasites of the cow" it was realized that they were more 
or less handicapped in the race of life. , 

The importance of the first quadrennium of life, the At- 
lanteans realized, even more than do our Freudians, should 
be sacred to the development of character, temperament, 
and disposition, all of which were now plastic and in their 
nascent stage, as they would never be again. Thus there 
were almost no repressions but all possible evocations. In- 
fants were allowed, and often even encouraged, to cry, 
because this was their chief form of exercise, especially be- 
fore walking, and because it developed circulation and gave 
volume to lungs and voice. The pleasure-pain principle 
was allowed a wide and almost unrestricted play. Nudity 
without shame was cultivated, and health and stamina were 
the prime quaesita. 

The first education was solely by play and story. One 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 47 

group of experts compiled all known plays, games, and 
sports, and rated the physical and moral value and the 
best age for each, always on the basis of long-tried-out ex- 
periments and observations, giving great weight to chil- 
dren's preferences. The ablest individuals of this group 
occasionally succeeded in inventing original games or toys 
that *Hook" with the children and had their own morale. 
There was thus a large repertory, not only of plays and 
games but also of toys for young and old, individual and 
social, free and controlled, indoor, street, park, field, forest, 
and shore plays. It was understood that almost everything 
could be taught playwise, and no great institution, inven- 
tion, or discovery was complete until it had been reduced 
to its simplest elements in toy form. Capacity for play 
was the criterion of educability. The child that could not 
play with abandon was not worth educating. Those, too, 
who could not do teamwork and recognize the spirit of jus- 
tice and subordination were not thought to give promise of 
being desirable citizens and were thus refused education. 
Toy congresses were also held, with prizes and awards for 
merit, and there were also museums where were collected, 
demonstrated, and loaned to schools, every grade and form 
of illustrative device and apparatus that short-circuited 
educational processes in every branch. Besides the investi- 
gators in this field, there were paidotribes who applied 
their results, reporting their findings that comparisons 
might give ever clearer verdicts as to the very best and 
warning against the second best, which is the curse of medi- 
ocrity. 

In likewise tbe storyologists ransacked mythology, litera- 
ture, and even daily life for tales, also simplifying all the 
older classic ones, and always having the children repeat 
and thus reedit them tA show what found deepest lodgment 
and response. These were also curricularized for older and 
younger minds, and grouped as to the virtues which they 



48 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

taugtt or the faults which they were designed to cure. 
Thus a very carefully chosen canon was evolved, and from 
this, we may add, grew an organization which passed upon 
all literature for the young and allowed nothing to be pub- 
lished that did not conform to their standards. Thus every- 
thing that we should call classic or biblical was simplified 
in the form of story roots, and many of them were not only 
told but acted by and for the children, with due apprecia- 
tion of their passion for representing not only types of hu- 
man, but even of animal, character (for great attention was 
paid to the animal epos). Many of these narratives were 
also put in scenario form and shown in the movies, for 
which provision was made in every school. At a more ad- 
vanced stage every drama or important story prescribed 
for reading was heard at a theater which was a part of 
the school system of every municipality, where the morale 
of each was enforced by every device which scenery, stage 
trappings, and the best actors could command; and we 
might add here, too, that the histrionic art, with a model 
theater and copious literature and all devices of the scenic 
art, was found and its unique culture power brought out 
in every seat of higher learning. Certain of the best tales 
were transmitted by these bards of children solely by oral 
tradition, and so sacredly were they regarded that it was 
made a crime to print or write them. 

In connection with the animal epos, each larger town 
had its pedagogic-zoological garden, where the typical 
beasts, large and small, and from various climes, could be 
observed at first hand, and household pets and barnyards 
of domesticated animals were utilized for education. Many 
types of animal life, especially as children know them, em- 
body single human traits as if Mansoul were dissected into 
its elements that children might by means of their interest 
in them here begin the study of man. Thus the lion is the 
symbol of boldness; Reynard, of cunning; the sloth, of 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 49 

laziness ; the eel, of slithyness ; the bear, of boorishness ; and 
so of the sheep, bat, serpent, wolf, eagle, dog, beaver, rat, 
weasel, ape, mammoth, butterfly, ant, bee, raven, parrot, 
pelican, and many more, as countless tropes, similes, fables, 
and myths show. It is the same symbolism latent in the 
child's mind that finds poetic expression in Shelley's "Sky- 
lark," Bryant's "Waterfowl," Holmes' "Chambered Nau- 
tilus," etc., to say nothing of fictitious creatures like the 
phoenix, centaur, hippogrif, roc, dragons, etc. Each im- 
portant animal had its child book abounding in pictures, 
myth, and also epitomizing the most salient and interesting 
features that naturalists and comparative psychologists had 
found out. Children's instinct to fancy themselves one 
animal after another; their interest in all extreme human 
types — the miser, sot, hobo, spendthrift, fool, dub, hypo- 
crite, sycophant, fop, lover, devotee — all these, even if they 
go to the extreme of impersonation, gave elasticity to char- 
acter, range of sympathy, and insight and plasticity to the 
intellect. 

Great stress was laid upon the educational value of music 
in a large sense as the language of the emotions, just as 
speech is that of the intellect. Selections of both words and 
music which must be truly wed were made solely with refer- 
ence to the sentiments they cultivated, which were chiefly 
those found in the field of love and of nature, home, coun- 
try, and God. The younger children were taught by and to 
use the voice only and always by rote at first, for it was 
thought to be as absurd to teach notation before the child 
commanded a large repertory of songs by ear as it would be 
to teach writing before the child could speak. For older 
children in every school there was a canon of both instru- 
inental and vocal music that might be heard from mechani- 
cal productions of them hardly to be distinguished from the 
original. 

Inseparable from music was, of course, dancing, the 



50 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

power of which to cadence the soul, to give it both control 
and elan, was indicated by the Atlantean proverb, **The 
father of mind is speech ; the father of prose is poetry ; the 
father of poetry is rhythm; and the father of rhythm is 
God. ' * Dancing was carried to a very high degree of per- 
fection and was of many kinds. There were military 
dances, which symbolized the salient features and senti- 
ments of all the typical activities of war ; industrial dances, 
which pantomimed the chief occupations; social dances, 
which set forth man's duty toward all the institutional 
products of his gregarious instinct ; amorous dances, which 
depicted in sublimated form the manifestations of the mat- 
ing instinct. Religious dances, which merged by impercep- 
tible gradations into rituals and ceremonies and pageant 
representations of the mythos of all the chief faiths, were 
very highly developed. There were prizes for new motor 
expressions in all these fields, and every suggestion from 
savage life was exploited to the uttermost by choreographic 
artists, some of the most signal devices of whom were as 
catching as in our era the polka, e.g.^ first proved, when 
statesmen and scholars neglected their duties to indulge in 
the pleasures of it. Only Delacrose in our era has glimpsed 
the possibilities here which the Atlanteans knew so well. 

The beginnings of education were in the home, and no 
girl was allowed to marry or become a mother until the 
marriage board had satisfied themselves of her competence, 
not only to bear but to train children during the first three 
or four years of their life. Then it was the custom for 
some mother in each community more favored by compe- 
tence and leisure than others to receive the children of 
neighbors in her own home and with her own offspring, and 
supervise their activities, teach them proverbs, songs, and 
something of Nature and God as her maternal instinct di- 
rected. These home-schools left thus free were found to be 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 51 

very rich in spontaneous pedagogic devices, which were 
always carefully collected and utilized. 

When boys and girls were six or seven, both were sent to 
the so-called * * groves. ' ' These were always in the country, 
under trees, with plenty of sunny spaces and arable and 
fertile soil of which each child had a plot, the organiza- 
tion of which somewhat suggests our ' * garden city. ' ' Pub- 
lic transportation to and from these educational sites was a 
problem which gave the Atlanteans no difficulty. Here for 
several years, varying at the teacher's discretion for dif- 
ferent children, each led during the day a life close to na- 
ture, largely out-of-doors, with little, and often no, knowl- 
edge of books, but with copious pictures and with a wide 
range of hill, shore, and wildwood ever open. During these 
years, usually to the age of about ten, all reading and writ- 
ing was discouraged and in some places punished ; the first 
because it was realized that speech really lives, moves, and 
has its being in the ear-mouth tracts, centers, and functions, 
and that the tract represented by the eye that reads and 
the hand that writes not only evolved eons later but is a 
process so long-circuited, slowed down, and devitalized that, 
if cultivated too early, it tends to suppress rather than to 
develop utterance. Writing was seen to involve too great 
strain, not only upon the tiny pen-wagging muscles, but 
upon the eye, so that it was placed at the end of a long 
series of preliminary exercises with larger fundamental 
muscles. There was no problem of spelling in the Atlan- 
tean language. The phonic symbols for each vocal element 
were unmistakable, and as no two words either looked or 
sounded alike, it was almost as impossible to misspell as it 
was to pun. In these fore-schools, too, all number work 
was oral and mental. It began with counting forward, 
backward, skipping-wise, and the elements of geometry 
came out in measurements incidental to children's occupa- 
tions. The simplest and fewest number symbols were 



52 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

learned only when the stage of development had been 
reached that made them imperative. Thus every kind of 
arithmomania was avoided. Geography began in topogra- 
phy and widened from the schoolyard to the township and 
finally to the state and to the world. Each school laid 
out a miniature state in a kind of land map plotted to 
scale and showing mountains, valleys, river-beds, and town- 
ships, all made with spades, and in the capital city was a 
large revolving globe one hundred and sixty feet in diame- 
ter, one-half millionth that of the earth, on the metallic 
surface of which were etched all the essential details of 
each country and the smaller items of each province, and 
even estates often were engraved so minutely that a micro- 
scope was often required to read them ; while in the wings 
of the building which housed this globe was a geographical 
library for savants. In these "groves'* there were models 
of the moon, sun, planets, and the stars, always illustrated 
by orreries and charts embodying in juvenile form the 
major results of astronomy, and also the compiled folklore 
for the development of sentiment. Of the moon, e.g., it 
was taught that it was once ripped from the earth from 
which it was slowly retreating, and was the frozen corpse 
of a dead world, with no air, moisture, or life, a prophecy 
of what our earth will sometime become. It was also repre- 
iSented as the dearest celestial object watching over us, 
weaving charming spells, and a not unworthy object toward 
which to direct prayer-wishes. Thus science and sentiment 
must be harmonised. 

Play merged over into work first in the construction of 
toys that the child wished to use, and the fabrication of a 
series of crude and simple physical instruments illustrating 
the rudiments of optics, acoustics, electricity, mechanics, 
etc., the interest being always focused upon the product 
rather than upon the process. Interest was everywhere the 
muse, and it was held to be a kind of rape to force knowl- 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 53 

edge upon unwilling minds and a sin against the Holy 
Ghost not to gratify at once and to the saturation point 
every legitimate manifestion of curiosity. Evocation of 
zest and spontaneity was always sought, and every child 
was incessantly observed and rated, not by the quantum of 
knowledge he acquired but by the strength and manifold- 
ness of his interests. Even at the end of the higher educa- 
tion it was understood that the momentum of the impulse 
to know and do and not the bulk of acquisitions was the 
criterion of educational values, and graduation was the 
beginning and not the end of culture. There was no com- 
pulsion, even of attendance; nor was there much need. 

During the quadrennium from eight or ten to twelve or 
fourteen the foregoing methods were supplemented by drill 
or Dressur. Disciplinary and obligatory goals predomi- 
nated. All must now learn to read and write, but the rest 
was elective. Each pupil, with his parents' cooperation, 
must choose some line of activity and each found fit was 
held to it by rigorous methods. If one or more other lan- 
guages were taken, as was rarely the case or need, there was 
incessant and at first chiefly oral drill, while the speech 
muscles and faculties were in their nascent period. If it 
was music, or a technical or even manual labor requiring 
skiU, all were subjected to rigid mechanical practice to 
make everything automatic as early and completely as pos- 
sible. Some dug, planted, helped in the quarries, streets, 
farms, or factories, for child labor proportionate to the 
child's strength was deemed necessaiy for physical and 
moral development, for every form of physical labor was 
done by the easiest and fewest movements possible, with 
vast economy of effort in nearly every process. Teachers 
had many books, and pupils few. Something was taught 
of the history and culture value of every occupation to 
give even to drudgery its pedagogic and moral points de 
repere. 



54 BECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

At the dawn of the new life of puberty the ** groves" 
were left, and all, save those with some marked incompe- 
tence or inferiority, reverted to their homes in the town 
or city. Of these some began their occupational life, for 
every industry had its juvenile department, where the kind, 
hours, and circumstances of labor were adjusted to the hy- 
gienic and moral needs of youth, which left plenty of time 
and opportunity for continuation training, while those fit- 
ted for the higher education went to middle schools, or 
people's colleges, which were the pride of every town and 
municipality. Here the courses lasted from four to five 
to seven or eight years, according to the intellectual ability 
of each. No one was held back by slower mates, for the 
Atlanteans had provided for exceptionally gifted children 
no less effectively than we have done for those who are 
subnormal, for the latter were thought far less worthy of 
pedagogic effort. Now the sexes were more or less segre- 
gated, as the normal tastes and prospective spheres of each 
were differentiated. Among girls a still more marked dif- 
ferentiation spontaneously arose between those who looked 
forward to motherhood and domestic life and those who 
sought self-support. There were no dead languages and few 
studied anything not to be used later. There were no 
examinations as we know them. Thus, each in a sense had 
his or her own course, and advancement or demotion almost 
came of itself. At this stage Kultur perhaps somewhat 
prevailed over culture; at least applications were every- 
where attempted and everywhere attended to as zest-gen- 
erators. All pupils visited under expert supervision all 
local institutions — administrative, civil, hygienic, indus- 
trial, charitable, penal, legislative, and thus became in a 
sense apprenticed to the life of the community, which was 
made to flow through the schools, and the members of each 
thus learned to distinguish what kind of knowledge was of 
most worth. Every locality, especially if rural, was left 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 55 

practically free to conduct not only its mother schools, but 
its ** groves," as it would. The state as such did nothing 
educational for its children till at the age of eighteen or 
twenty they were ready for academic life, focusing all its 
funds and supervision upon the later higher stages of 
training of its intellectually elite for leadership. Here, in 
most departments, the ** guides" had early fallen naturally 
into two chief groups, the demonstrators, and the pioneers. 
The former conducted the so-called theaters and the latter 
inspired and led in researches. In physiology, e.g., the 
demonstrator with his corps of assistants working in the 
theater laboratory prepared one after another standard ex- 
periment with elaborate chart-scenery and apparatus set- 
ting forth objectively every method and result in the do- 
main of digestion, assimilation, the action of glands and 
hormones, circulation, respiration, muscle action, secretive 
and eliminative processes, fatigue, rest, sleep, the functions 
of every sense, conduction and reaction time of nerves and 
centers, etc. The same practice prevailed in chemistry £ind 
physics, while in such fields as astronomy, geology, meteor- 
ology, botany, zoology, and anthropology, every possible ex- 
perimentation was supplemented by a wealth of diagrams, 
models, photographs, and movies. In every science its his- 
tory, epochs, and great men were stressed to give humanis- 
tic zest, and even applications to arts and industries had 
their place to stimulate interest. 

The Atlanteans had bored the earth for miles in places, 
so that they could draw on its central energies for power, 
light, and heat, for their coal proved more expensive and 
all their forests were artificial. They also utilized energy 
from sea-waves, tides, and the sun, and some of them had 
learned to make radium and utilize its incalculable power 
in place of electricity. Others had successfully signaled 
Mars and were accumulating precious data on the life of 
the Martians. Still others were planning an expedition to 



56 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

the moon with engines that could, with the aid of the 
strongest ballistic powers to start them, negotiate the ether. 
On the summit of their highest mountain a tower of three 
thousand feet was built to study the effects of rarefication. 
The botanists had developed majiy kinds of new plants, 
flowers, and fruits, which were cleverly composed by the 
arts of cross-fertilization, so that the vegetable kingdom 
had become very plastic to man ; while experimental studies 
of animal breeding had led them to control this and to de- 
velop many new species, some of which could propagate 
their kind. Certain elements their chemists could generate, 
and some of them had begun to make diamonds and gold 
in their laboratories. The biologists could evolve life from 
crystals and emulsions and could generate many new or- 
ganic substances by their mastery of carbon compounds. 
The wealth and resources of their laboratories where all this 
was done far surpassed ours, and every opportunity and in- 
centive to the pioneer was provided, with the constant ad- 
monition to contribute something new to human knowledge, 
even though it be but a tiny brick in the great temple of 
science, which was regarded as the supreme creation of 
man. Those who did so and gave promise of future intel- 
lectual fecundity were supported by the state and exempted 
from all other duties. The leading pioneers were given a 
seat in the academic council, which was the chief honor 
the state could bestow, and their effigies were placed in the 
HaU of Fame. They were given the freedom of honored 
guests of the nation, and along with the leisure thus as- 
sured, they were given a simple admonition, ''Keep doing 
your best thing and eschew every second best activity." 
They were regarded as the light and hope of the state. 
They had but to present their projects and they were at 
once put into execution. Whenever they went abroad, it 
was in state and they were so revered that sometimes cities 
vied with each other for the honor of having given them 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 5T 

birth or of having nurtared them in youth, for in Atlantia 
every one could rise from the humblest to the most exalted 
station upon merit. Yet even they, and perhaps they best 
of all, realized that man had just begun to know and com- 
mand Nature, that even they were small, weak, and ignorant 
of most that man should know and could do. 

History was philosophy teaching by example, and its 
moral aspect was always stressed. It was commonly taught 
backward from effect to cause, and with the most advanced 
students penetrated even toward the dawn of history. 
Here, too, charts, diagrams and graphic methods, and every 
device of photography were utilized. While the geographic, 
climatic, and economic aspects of history were stressed, it 
was recognized that here lay the realm of human freedom 
and often a very arbitrary choice, and that the characters 
of great men must be analyzed, and especially that history 
is ever in the making, so that its best pages cannot be writ- 
ten yet because the best things have not yet come to pass. 
It was seen that great leaders are presentifiers resolving 
everything into the here and now, making every issue a 
devoir present. 

Economics and sociology were chiefly intent on compiling 
all the experiences of man in industrial, civil, and social 
life, so as to find the very best conditions of his further de- 
velopment. In the best Atlantean period even these 
savants were in closest rapport with, the governmental pol- 
icy and the great organizations and were not recusants from 
practical life, for all strove toward ideal conditions to avoid 
lapsing from them, so that experts in this field were not 
prone to cut loose from reality and revel in Utopian and 
milennial dreameries. 

Psychology, after a long speculative period, had emanci- 
pated itself from metaphysics and to some extent from 
physiology and had become a culminating academic theme, 
the only one which all desired and which it was felt need- 



58 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

ful to know. It was genetic, comparative, clinical, and 
strove chiefly to give self-knowledge and self-control. It 
associated itself closely with religion and also with educa- 
tion, analyzed individualities to discern the best that was 
in every one and to guide him to it, and to realize that the 
soul of man is no less a product of evolution than is his 
body; and it also regarded all languages, myths, institu- 
tions, faiths, and even deities and everything transcen- 
dental as projections of Mansoul. It was more or less prag- 
matic, but put the primordial developmental nisus which 
we dub wiU-to-live, elan vital, Ubido, horme, etc., as the 
V .supreme thing in all the world, surcharged with the promise 
■ and potency of a higher race of supermen which it was the 
business of civilization and learning to produce. 

The spirit of intellectual Atlantis culminated in the so- 
called frontiersmen, whom we might call pure academicians, 
who lived somewhat apart and who planned and executed 
major enterprises of discovery and control of nature and 
of man. It was they who had established observatories on 
each pole, both geographic and magnetic, which were in 
constant wireless connection with each other summer and 
winter ; built several steel cofferdams to the very bottom of 
the deepest parts of the sea which swayed with the stronger 
surface currents and storm-waves as our skyscrapers do to 
high wind; constructed and directed the thermal labora- 
tories which commanded a temperature all the way from 
absolute zero, where even chemical affinities were dead and 
every kind of energy save gravity was in abeyance, up to 
about 20,000° F., at which every substance — earth, 
rocks, and even the elements — was vaporized and all matter 
volatile ; suggested and made possible the extremely profits 
able enterprise of recovering sunken treasures from the sea- 
bed, etc. In a vast hall all the phenomena of weather 
changes and climate, storm, thunder and lightning, tornado, 
and cyclone could be reproduced in miniature under con- 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 59 

trolled conditions, and there was a yet more elaborate hall, 
where it was hoped to reproduce the chief phenomena of 
the early stages of the evolution of the planets from cosmic 
ether and nebula. A section of these frontiersmen di- 
rected the work of making microscopesandtelescopeswhich, 
by composition and combination and correction of lenses, 
so greatly extended the range of man's visual knowledge 
toward both the infinitely great and small that some of our 
speculative elements like atoms, vital units, such as ids, 
gemmules and even ions were proved or disproved by an 
appeal to vision. Another group devoted themselves to 
hyper- or n-dimensional space, for it was known that be- 
yond the limits of the stellar universe which is lenticular, 
the Milky Way being due to the fact that we look out 
toward the edges from near the center of this cosmic lens, 
there stretched an infinite ocean of space unpopulated by 
stars, wherein many of the principles and even the axioms 
of our Euclidean geometry do not hold. For the details of 
these and many other scientific enterprises, some more and 
some less developed, the reader must wait for the fuller 
account yet to appear in a volume of the above-announced 
report. 

I will only mention here one of the most adventurous 
projects, viz., that of the group of frontiersmen who de- 
voted themselves to bettering the human stock or to pro- 
ducing what we only dream of as the superman. They se- 
lected after many cunningly devised tests and examinations 
a number of individuals of each sex and also from each race 
of man that they deemed ascendant and not descendant, and 
for them controlled all the processes connected with the 
act and the function of reproduction. The entire regimen 
of the men was directed to maximize their potential father- 
hood and that of the woman, their motherhood. In these 
Edens or new-world cunabula, as they were called, it was 
sought to determine by experiment and observation the 



60 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

eugenic value of love versus the wisest assignment of mates 
that these pathfinders for humanity could suggest, the best 
conditions and methods of courtship and even marital 
approach, its frequency before, and place after, and the 
effects of abstinence or indulgence during, gravidity. 
Special attention was given to the effects of divergence, 
identity, or complementation of types and dispositions, the 
effects of different emotional conditions during pregnancy 
and nursing, the length of the latter period, and even the 
choice of a wet-nurse if in extremity this should be neces- 
sary. The crossing of different human stocks or races was 
tried out with a view to finding favorable and unfavorable 
combinations and to determining whether an exhausted 
stock could be rejuvenated by blending with one more pri- 
mal. One of these departments was devoted to the study 
of the effects of diseases upon heredity and to determine 
when propagation should be forbidden or even made im- 
possible. 

I must omit here all account of the various experimental 
social and industrial organizations which were located in 
various provinces of Atlantis to determine the best condi- 
tions of production, civil and political organizations, as well 
as even the best forms of religion, for the reports of these 
experimental stations will make one of the most interest- 
ing of the forthcoming volumes. Syndicalism, direct ac- 
tion, cooperation, much and little regimentation, colonial 
policies, taxation, centralization versus local autonomy, 
kinds and limits of suffrage which might be, and sometimes 
were, withdrawn from both individuals and communities, 
modes of dealing with harlotry and intoxication — on all 
these it was sought to collect valuable data which would 
really be scientific and normative. 

It had taken many centuries of hard work by the best 
minds to evolve this system, but its decline and fall was 
rapid. It began with the growth of the proletariat which 



THE FALL OP ATLANTIS 61 

demanded that every opportunity be open to all. There 
must be no exclusion of the inferior or unfit from every 
privilege or incentive provided for the best. Throngs of 
second-rate pupils made it necessary to refit all knowledge 
to a lower average of intelligence and slow down the pace 
of the best. Then arose a cry against cloistered learning. 
The "people" must know all the projects of the pioneers 
and even of the frontiersmen and pass upon them, and they 
were charged with quixotic schemes and with extravagance, 
and thus the resources available for research were gradu- 
ally cut down. A movement akin to our university exten- 
sion compelled savants to itinerate and teach the masses, 
till extensive eclipsed intensive work, and there was little 
left at the centers to ''extend." All education must be 
immediately and crassly useful, and everywhere the cult of 
mediocrity began to exclude that of talent. The pioneers, 
it was said, had hitherto devoted themselves to the cult of 
the useless and made their seats of learning places where 
nothing useful was taught, and now they must execute a 
volte-face and cultivate nothing useless. A few great 
leaders had no training beyond that of the "groves," and 
therefore it was said the higher learning was of doubtful 
value and the vast resources spent upon it should be better 
applied. Too much knowledge intimidates, special train- 
ing would probably enfeeble the great enterprisers, and it 
is chiefly needful only for tecTmologists who are not masters 
but servants. Now in fact nothing is so dangerous as great 
ideas in a little mind or overweaning ambitions in weak 
ones. The result is always either a Phaethon-like catastro- 
phe or else a false but festering sense of discontent which 
may issue in revolt against things as they are ; and in fact 
both these results were abundantly illustrated in Atlantis. 
Now, too, the state had to reverse its policy of support. 
Instead of subsidizing the higher, and leaving the elemen- 
tary, training to private initiative, the government took 



62 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

over and reconstructed not only the *' groves'' but even 
the mother-schools, and left all advanced training and re- 
search to private enterprise. Not mothers but more or less 
trained and apprenticed experts must teach the elements, 
and that by a method so uniform that the director-general 
could look at his timepiece and say, ^ ' At this moment every 
child in all this vast system is doing just this thing, in 
this way, with the aid of this lesson in this book. ' ' Every 
topic was curricularized, graded, quantified into modest 
dosages, and all pupils were organized into classes by 
lock-step and mass methods, and individuality tended to 
be lost in cunningly devised ways of dealing with children 
in platoons. There were also expert organizers, and end- 
less surveys by experts to ascertain the cost of training 
each child in each grade per hour and minute. Ingenious 
formulae for obtaining maximal efficiency at minimum cost 
were evolved, and the programs of meetings of those who 
conducted the higher academic training were monopolized 
by themes of office economy, dean administration, and sta- 
tistical methods, till those interested in education itself or 
in children and youth, and especially those who cared 
chiefly for the advancement of science, held aloof from all 
this business, and here, again, Kultur slowly superseded 
culture. 

Under this new spirit school buildings, often sumptuous, 
multiplied, and specialinstitutions for training teachers were 
founded everywhere. If business activities were dull, these 
latter institutions were crowded; but if enterprise and 
trade were active and larger salaries were offered elsewhere, 
they were depleted, so that now there was a dearth, and now 
a superfluity, in the teaching personnel. This occupation 
everywhere tended to be so poorly paid that only those 
who had a kind of missionary fanaticism for it or those of 
distinctly inferior parts were found in it. Textbook and 
apparatus artificers multiplied and made their influence 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 63 

increasingly felt and in ways ranging througli a long ga- 
mut from very good to very bad. Boards of control popu- 
larly chosen from the masses kept everything true to the 
standards of mediocrity, striving to reconcile as best they 
could the more or less irreconcilable mandates of economy 
and efficiency. 

Higher seats of learning also multiplied. The best grew 
rich as they grew old, and aspired to cover all the fields of 
possible knowledge. Some were municipal, some provin- 
cial, some national, some free and independent of all con- 
trol. Some were established to perpetuate the memory of 
the childless rich; others to boom local interests or doc- 
trinaire views. While some were large and rich, othera 
were small and poor. All were headed by shrewd and able 
organizers, whose policy was animated by two ideals : more 
students, more wealth. Nature and nurture combined, how- 
-ever, did not supply sufficient men to head all the depart- 
ments in these many institutions, so that professional qual- 
ity declined. Many of them were drawn away into more 
lucrative or technical applications, so that it was found 
impossible to man some of the most important of them. 
Departments, and even schools, were founded to meet 
passing demand, and the small body of certain and valu- 
able knowledge in the domain of many such mushroom 
ifields was whipped into a sillabub of courses in which 
matter was almost hidden by method. Many, if not most, 
of these institutions and departments were vastly alike, each 
copying promptly every successful new departure in every 
other instead of freely differentiating so that all together 
they could cover the whole field of cognition and not leave 
a vast and arid acreage untenanted. Yet each of these in- 
stitutions deemed itself the incarnation of some peculiar, 
precious, but indefinable spirit that made it excel all others 
and which was always vociferously appealed to. There were 
also very efficient student-recruiting bureaus and traveling 



64 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

agents to lure students, often with a long list of exemp- 
tions, privileges, athletic honors, and even bonuses; and 
there were incessant drives for more funds, till the alumni^ 
especially if men of means, felt themselves almost perse- 
cuted by countless subtle methods of importunity. There 
were expert drive conductors who sold their services for a 
percentage of what they could raise to different institu- 
tions, and who instituted house-to-house visitations, proces- 
sions, placards, engineered subtle implications of disloy- 
alty to recusants, and who were super-subtle in the appli- 
cation of methods that were hardly less than extortionate. 
Great donors were honored by halls, statues, portraits, and 
degrees, and their names were attached to many a fund 
and building; and sometimes obnoxious conditions (such is 
the power of mortmain here) were adhered to long after 
they should have been outgrown. The frailities of these 
donors were glossed over by the charity that has such 
power to cover sins. As their wealth increased, many gor- 
geous architectural structures arose in which, as a result 
of bitter controversies between the academicians, who 
looked chiefly to usefulness, and the architects, who looked 
to display, the former had to capitulate to the latter. So 
lucrative was the business of housing and feeding students 
that private enterprises often entered the lists and made 
large profits for outsiders, greatly to the disgust of the 
dons, who felt that all that could be derived from students 
was legitimately their own. For all funds established for 
students' benefit the institution took first its toll, deducting 
it from the ever-rising and multipljang student fees. Ex- 
aminations were always on, or in prospect — a long series of 
them for entrance, one for each topic, each term, each year, 
biennial and quadrennial terminals. There were sprung or 
unexpected examinations, and often in large classes all 
recitations were written, with a small but trained body 
of expert spies to ferret out illegitimate ways of giving or 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 65 

receiving help. There was also a large group of bright 
but impecunious upperclass students, who earned their 
way by the fearful drudgery of examining and marking 
every paper of every student from the viewpoint of both 
matter and form, and all this had to be done accurately 
because gradation, promotion, and awards to scholarships 
depended upon these quantifications. These laboriously 
compiled averages for each. Meanwhile instructors in these 
higher institutions were made to feel that their calling was 
so dignified that they could afford to sacrifice material 
considerations for the honor bestowed upon them and the 
respect in v/hich they were held. But slowly their old 
leadership declined, as, e.g., in our own eon the pulpit has 
done, and some of the professorlings came to realize that 
they could no longer hold their own with men of the world. 
Indeed some of the more modest and conscientious among 
them even ventured to ask themselves whether they were 
not living in a fool's paradise, not only as to tjie respect 
due their calling, but whether they were really earning 
their own modest salaries. "Was theirs really a man 's task ? 
Had they really grown since they were seated in their 
chairs or shriveled ? 

As in Gregory's Meccania these new fashions seemed 
at fii*st to give a new impulse to the state. Knowledge was 
diffused and every^body knew something of everything as the 
omne sihile was chased into practicalities. Great industries 
attracted scores of experts intent upon saving waste and 
utilizing by-products. Academic laboratories were engaged 
chiefly upon problems submitted to them by guilds of dyers, 
bakers, miners, laundrjmien, farmers, gardeners, irrigators, 
machinists, engineers, sewerologists, and scores of others. 
Economists became the servitors of business, and even so- 
ciologists became apologists of things as they are. Psy- 
chologists tested and assayed every human quality with 
reference to every demand for human activity. But it is 



66 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

one thing to fit men to be cogs in preexisting machinery and 
another to develop ever higher powers in man himself 
which impel him to create ever newer and higher institu- 
tions as progress demands. Hence the complaint arose in 
the course of time that there was a dearth of men capable 
of filling the most important positions. Affairs became 
Frankensteins that dominated man, their creator. Mech- 
anism as it became perfect grew unprogressive for lack of 
original minds, and stagnation, on however high a plane, 
always results in a decline, and those who think them- 
selves already perfect never become so. Regression at the 
top extended downward and complacency camouflaged sub- 
tle degeneration of morale. There were incessant presenta- 
tions in diagramed and tabular form, showing the exact 
financial value of every added year and month of educa- 
tion, and these were everywhere conspicuously and allur- 
ingly displayed. Thus teachers came to overestimate the 
worth of their own services to the state and community 
and began to form unions to enforce recognition of what 
they deemed their just increase of emoluments, rights, and 
privileges. The guild of teachers, which had become a well- 
organized sect and in some respects a sex by themselves, 
insisted that they were the pillars of the state and it was 
their efforts chiefly that had made it great and strong. 
They entered politics, drafted many and complex laws and 
ordinances and resolutions, rallied to the support of any how- 
ever weak members of their own guild who were displaced, 
and at last, after many and long struggles, organized and 
executed a strike so effectually that at a given day all the 
sub-academic schools throughout all Atlantis were closed. 
Meetings were held in which the janitors were very active, 
and there were many resolutions and statements to the pub- 
lic in justification of this action. The * 'pedicos ' ' demanded 
not only more pay but longer vacations; shorter class 
hours ; more freedom from supervision ; equal pay for male 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 67 

and female, elementary and higher, rural and urban teach- 
ing; less marking; smaller classes, etc. Thus all these 
demands, if granted, would involve radical reconstructions 
of the entire system. Parents, boards, and superintendents 
urged reconsideration upon the irate teachers, and many 
modes of arbitration and compromise were proposed, but 
in vain. Many communities called for volunteers and many 
such offered their services, but, as we have seen, the police 
were disorganized, and often mobs led by janitors resisted 
all efforts to open buildings, although in many places this 
was done and classes were held under armed guards, often 
with parents. Here and there were attempts to revive the 
old system, but progress had been so vaunted that all that 
was old was discounted. In many families something like 
liie mother-schools of the good old days were revived, but the 
idea that teaching was a fine technical art had been so insid- 
iously inculcated that there was little confidence in teach- 
ers without special training. Here and there one teacher, 
or even a group of teachers, relented and resumed their 
old task, perhaps through pity for the children, or as the 
result of the importunity of their parents. Meanwhile, as 
the months and years passed, most of the teachers found 
no difficulty in obtaining more lucrative positions. Thus 
weakened by the secession from their ranks of their lead- 
ers, those incapable of other tasks grew sullen and morose. 
There were sometimes fires in now vacated school build- 
ings attributed to them, and occasionally a suspicious ex- 
plosion wrecked one of the most imposing of these struc- 
tures. Some of these were sold and perhaps transformed 
for other uses, while the rest fell into neglect. Meanwhile, 
too, hoodlumism and juvenile crime increased at a rapid 
rate. Gangs of swagger young toughs often roamed the 
street by night and even by day, committing depredations 
upon property and persons until, especially in suburbs 
where the men were away during the day, they often be- 



68 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

came not only a menace but a terror to all, especially to 
women and children. Where schools were reopened, it was 
bands of young desperadoes who often broke them up, 
smashing windows, sometimes invading the rooms, turning 
out the children, and perhaps burning school books, furni- 
ture, and illustrative apparatus. These young Apaches 
were sometimes led by their brazen girl mates. Looting 
parties of them sometimes marched defiantly up and down 
the streets, intent not only on sabotage, but upon looting, 
and this evil became so great that where the remnant of 
the police could not quell it, soldiers were called in and 
there was many a brief battle, with killing on both sides. 
Former teachers were objects of special antagonism by the 
most insubordinate of their former pupils, and they were 
not infrequently held up, befouled, and subjected to every 
indignity ; and, if fortunate, they escaped with no bodily in- 
jury. Other of the older but less disorderly children and 
youth made manifold counterdemonstrations. They pa- 
raded with placards, petitioning the teachers to return, 
advocating placatory concessions to their demands, and 
there were many encounters between these and the hoodlum 
groups in which former classmates were arrayed against 
each other. 

The higher institutions of learning, deprived thus of their 
** fitters, " languished. A few students here still managed 
to qualify privately, or in the few reinstated lower schools, 
but the once large revenue from students' fees shrank, and 
naturally the governmental appropriations were still more 
reduced as the average expense of training each student 
decupled. All academic teacher-training work was at first 
stimulated in the hope of filling the places of the secondary 
staff, but this work soon fell under the ban. Since the 
collapse of these departments some time before, there were 
no longer students attending either law or medicine. Great 
efforts were made to sustain certain courses deemed essen- 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 69 

tial, while others were dropped, but there was great di- 
vergence as to what branches belonged in these categories. 
Equipment, salary, and upkeep suffered progressively. 
Both the ''pioneers" and the ''frontiersmen" first tried to 
sustain themselves by patents and by selling their services 
to industries, until most of the surviving savants were 
found with the latter, for commercialism became the last 
stand of the moribund scientific spirit. Some of the higher 
institutions abandoned all academic, and devoted them- 
selves exclusively to extension work, for which the debacle 
of the educational system for at least a season created a 
greatly increased demand. But overpopularized learning 
is diluted and gives a shallow conceit of knowledge without 
its substance. Thus for a time the masses that thronged 
the seats of learning, not only evenings, but mornings and 
afternoons, slowly diminished. They demanded, too, that 
these new intellectual wares thus dispensed be brought to 
their own doors. Hence, great scholars had often to travel 
to outlying districts and crossroad schools to vend their 
lore. Some few devoted themselves to this task like true 
itinerant missionaries, hoping thus to stem the tide of de- 
cay for their motherland. Some of the older seats of learn- 
ing closed altogether and were left to the slow processes of 
decay. In one case of this kind we find a pathetic story 
of an old college janitor and sexton still living on the 
academic grounds, "whence all but he had fled," and who 
rang the college bell every hour, although it called only 
phantom classes, till he died. Some institutions in a long 
life-and-death struggle to keep the wolf from the door sus- 
tained themselves by selling part of their grounds for other 
purposes and leasing or selling some of their buildings for 
offices, shops, etc. Some institutions not too far apart ef- 
fected more or less revolutionary devices of federation, lay- 
ing aside perhaps with much inner mortification a long- 
cherished and inveterate spirit of rivalry to do so. Former 



70 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

heads of these institutions were the most fortunate, for 
they were especially sought as promoters and propagan- 
dists hy the larger business firms, while a few achieved emi- 
nent success in methods of conducting advertising bureaus. 
Many professors opened private schools, where they often 
grew wealthy, supplying to parents of means the demand 
for training, although these new ventures often had to 
encounter not only opposition but occasionally attack from 
ex-teachers whose occupation was gone. Once not only all 
the tangible properties of these institutions had been ex- 
empt from taxation but even their vested funds. This was 
at the time when townships had vied for the honor and 
profit of having them founded in their midst. But now 
the government exacted its highest rate of taxation for 
both realty and funds and later even confiscated their en- 
dowment because their service to the state was gone. Their 
libraries were stiU open at certain hours, but little visited 
and poorly manned. Some ot them were sealed under or- 
ders, and nearly the same was the fate of the museums. 
Scientific apparatus and instruments for both demonstra- 
tion and research, with which laboratories had been so 
admirably stocked, were auctioned; some found its way 
to, and use in, industrial establishments, and some of it 
was carefully stored and in a few generations in the more 
ignorant communities, where their use was unknown and 
forgotten, became objects of superstitious and fetishistic 
awe. Letters declined, illiteracy grew apace, till the guilds 
of both book-writers and printers were dissolved and the 
many kinds of expertness went the way of the lost arts of 
our antiquity. Members of learned societies who strug- 
gled to keep alive the traditions of the past grew fewer, 
meetingSi more infrequent, and their proceedings more 
largely devoted to obituaries of members who had died, 
for most of these Fellows were old and there was little 
new blood from which to recruit their membership. More 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 71 

and more often the work of all experts was regarded as fu- 
tile and fatuous. In some places they were often regarded 
somewhat as radicals, dangerous to the established order, 
so that their sessions and even their existence had to be 
secret. 

Thus in these and many other ways ignorance and super- 
stition slowly spread their dark pall over the land, fold on 
fold, and as the very acme of pathos even the records of 
this decline flickered and went out, and thus perhaps merci- 
fully to those who ages after found and deciphered these 
records our world is spared the last act of the greatest 
tragedy in all the story of human culture. If the glory of 
learning here at its best shames our age into a sense of in-^ 
feriority by contrast, the later stages may well make us 
feel exultant, for we can still hearten ourselves with a 
sense of our progress, and we may safeguard ourselves- 
against relapse by the warnings that have now most oppor- 
tunely come up to us from out of the depths of the sea. 

VI 

THE ZENITH AND NADIR OF RELIGION 

The religious history of Atlantis is perhaps most unique 
of all to our age. Full as are the records here, a very suc- 
cinct account must suffice. The entire development of At- 
lantis, it must be remembered, was remarkably autoch- 
thonous. It was the cunabula of man. The data of paleon- 
tology here were so widespread and abundant that very 
early in their history the Atlanteans realized that man had 
evolved through many developmental stages and through 
a long line of ancestry. It was here, in fact, that man 
became man long before he did anywhere else in the world. 
No Darwin or Haeckel was needed to antagonize old re- 
ligious dogma in order that man might read his title clear 
to a pedigree that showed that he had sprung from anthro- 



72 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

poids, lemurs, ampliioxus, and all the rest. Every one 
recognized, too, that he had instincts within him that 
pointed clearly to a long stage of arboreal life, which had 
made a paw into a hand and oriented him up and down 
so that both the sky and earth were a little more permeable 
to fancy, etc. Indeed everything seemed to indicate that 
here all the stages of the evolution of at least the higher 
states of animal life had been more rapid than elsewhere. 
The pithecoid fossils were found in older strata as well as 
in vastly greater abundance, so that the stages of evolution 
that we have had to work out so laboriously from very 
fragmentary remains had been familiar to them from the 
first. Here the diluvial and glacial age had effaced nothing 
Bave in the northern part of the realm, and they believed 
that theirs had been the very first land to rise permanently 
above the primeval sea. At any rate, Atlantis was some- 
what unique in having no traditions of a flood save such 
as could be accounted for by inundations or limited sub- 
mergencies. Thus when our ancestors had been troglodytes 
in the paleolithic Neanderthal stage, the Atlanteans were 
well on the way to civilization. We have marveled at the 
similarity between the dragons of folklore and the remains 
of the great saurians of the Trias, but so close was the re- 
semblance between the two Atlantean myths that there 
could be no doubt that primitive man here had seen with 
his own eyes some of the later representatives of the tita- 
notheres. 

Having thus before them so early in the history in the 
abundant fossils and caves the fullest history Nature ever 
kept of her ascending processes, it is no wonder that the 
Atlanteans felt themselves uniquely one with all Nature, 
the consummate product of her creative evolution. Hence 
the first being worshiped was somewhat akin to Durkheim's 
Mama, or a vast, vague or universal being and power suf- 
fused through all things and animating all. The Hindu 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 73 

Only the One and All of Parmenides, the Pure Being of He- 
gel and all our ontologists, the primeval ether — all these 
are reminiscent of it. It lives, moves, and has its heing in 
all things and is at the same time nothing and everything, 
all that ever was, is, or can be, and immeasurably more 
than even this. All that begins comes from it, and all that 
ceases is resolved back into it, while it never began and can 
never end. Their clumsy words for it no more compassed 
it than our speech can do, for it is beyond all words and 
thought and can only be felt as that on which all depends. 
To personify it is idolatry; yet it cajinot remain unob- 
jectified, but must have some sjonbol, and there must be 
more of it in some things than in others; and so various 
tribes came to regard, some one, some another, object or 
group of objects as its favorite incarnation. Some tribes 
saw it in nearly every object and became animistic ; others 
found it in some rare, curious, or weird fetish; others 
thought it best expressed in the vast open vault of the 
heavens and sky; yet others in the sun, moon, or stars. 
Some saw it in the sea or stream or other forms of water; 
some in fire, clouds, rain, lightning, storm. Some, in 
hills and rocks; others, in trees and vegetable forms. Yet 
others saw its best embodiment in certain animals, and still 
others, perhaps best represented by humanity or some in- 
dividual of our species. All had their own rites and cere- 
monials, places, and forms of worship, and made oblations, 
sacrifices, and prayers, at first apotropaic or warning their 
gods to go away and later inviting their presence protec- 
tion, and aid. 

In the vast Atlantean realm almost anything was 
somewhere made an object of awe and reverence, if not of 
worship. Even the many deities were not jealous of each 
other, so that a spirit of toleration we can hardly under- 
stand prevailed, and persecution was unknown because i1 
was realized that all cults represented normal stages of 



74 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

evolution, 'which, had its most perfect and plastic cultural 
expression in the ascending stages of the religious con- 
sciousness. This was because it was so clearly seen that the 
soul no less than the body was evolved from primal animal 
instincts and there was no great chasm separating Mansoul 
from lower manifestations of the psyche or even demarca- 
ting vital from physical and mechanical energy. There 
were, of course, no missionaries intent upon soul-saving by 
conversions from one cult and faith to another, but only 
genetic parturitionists helping those able and disposed to 
molt old forms for the new and next higher always present 
but concealed in the lower and revealed in the higher, all 
by the methods of evolution and not revolution. 

It was realized that, e.g.^ all must pass through, and 
that some few should never transcend the fetishistic stage, 
and so the cult of charms, amulets, relics, mementoes, col- 
lections of objects, and especially treasure, culminating 
often in precious stones, and finally property and the fasci- 
nation of ownership was developed to its uttermost that the 
best and most might be made of it. Thus the pedigree of 
the gold lust was understood and also its limitations by 
those capable of a higher love thus symbolized. 

For tree worshipers, woodmen, and foresters, the uni- 
verse was described in arboreal form. The stars were its 
fruits, the roots held the world together and progress was 
ascent, the various forms of life were its leaves, and the 
awe of the primeval forest, suggestive of groined arches, 
was connected with the home of man's pithecoid ancestors, 
wherein they found safety, cultivated curiosity by observ- 
ing the prowling beasts below, and developed dread of open 
spaces, physical or mental, and all the gravity or geotropic 
orientations. Here, too, all climbing and winged creatures 
found a welcome abode, and there was protection in 
branches and cadence in their swaying, all of which sur- 
vives in us only as faint esthetic stirrings but which was 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 75 

and could again become a religion instinct with a vitality 
and inspiration all its own. 

So, too, water in its three forms was made a mythotheme. 
with rites and a philosophy and symbolism which to the 
Atlanteans, especially those on the smaller adjacent islands, 
was particularly attractive. They all knew that their land 
had risen from the sea, and it was not their navigators 
alone that felt the charm and mystery of its many moods 
and voices. The sun was a ball of the most subtle and fiery 
ether, secreted each day anew from the earth and sea and 
akin to the fires in the heart of the earth on which they 
had learned to draw. Thus it was here taught that man 
should ever sublimate the highest from the lowest and most 
material in his soul. The earth came from the sun, which 
supplies all its energy, and as it conquers the cloud and 
storm demons, piercing them with its darting rays, so we 
must conquer sin and ignorance. Fire-worship was akin 
to that of the sun, for fire refines and distills an ethereal 
element that soars upward toward the gods and leaves 
only dross and ash behind. It stands, too, for the ardor of 
love. Its control marked a great step upward in human 
progress, and at a certain stage all the deeper religious 
instincts are connected with it and dependence may well 
be directed toward, and elevated by it. Limited as the 
thermal scale of life is, this scale stretches up and down 
indefinitely, and thus we are in a sense children of fire and 
light. 

Animals are our elder brothers and are far better adapted 
to their conditions than man has yet learned to be. They 
have taught him many arts, and the lives of many of them 
are full of morals for man as the animal epos here, which 
was very highly developed, abundantly shows. Many spe- 
cies are our direct ancestors and all are our cousins. Man 
needs their strength, keenness of sense, power of flight, as 
well as their hides and flesh. Each ascending order was 



76 KECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

once a lord of creation, till at last man became their leader. 
Medicine and hygiene were largely the products of experi- 
ments npon them. Even now all their wisdom and industry 
combined could perhaps surpass that of man. They are our 
totemic ancestors and natural objects of fear and love, 
and great educators of these sentiments in us. Many spe- 
cies of them were given statues and a few, temples and 
services in their honor. Great individuals among them 
were on their way up and bad men on the way down the 
ladder of transmigration. Some species, it was held, were 
simply degenerate men atoning for the sins of their for- 
mer lives and working their way laboriously up to hu- 
manity. Some few were held to be deities incarnated in 
this form by their own choice. Many individuals of 
many species had been not merely domesticated but edu- 
cated by the aid of selective breeding to a degree of intelli- 
gence far beyond anything we know in our beast world, so 
that they made not merely valued servants but companions 
of man. Particularly was this true of the ape, horse, dog, 
eagle, parrot, and some of the larger felidae, while many 
families were proud to bear animal names. Thus theromor- 
phic forms seemed to many the best embodiments of the uni- 
versal Mana principle, and the chief traits of their char- 
acter and the activities of their lives were set forth in the 
ancient and ever reedited and relibrettoed symbolic sacred 
dances near the shrines where they were adored. Highest 
and latest here, of course, were the anthropomorphic cults, 
and the chief trait of all these deities was that they died 
in agony and arose in splendor, as vegetation dies in the 
fall and arises in the spring, or as the sun daily yields to 
night in the west and conquers it in the east. In Atlan- 
tis it was these cults that slowly gained the ascendancy 
over others, especially for the mature and intelligent. 
These god-men were all of superior size, strength, beauty, 
grace, and compelling magnetic personality. All devoted 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 77 

themselves with abandon to the elevation of mankind, and 
at first, with success. Later in their career their develop- 
ment outstripped that of their fellow-men and often even 
all their most esoteric followers. When the tide turned, 
they were ridiculed, buffeted, betrayed, suffered every 
physical torture and mental indignity in the whole litany 
of human woes, and at last were cruelly slain and died 
in utter despair, not only with no hope for, or belief in, 
another world or life, but convinced of the absolute folly 
and error of all their ideals and endeavors, and realizing 
that they were utterly forsaken by man and that there was 
to be no sequel. The latter, however, always came, but 
always and only in the minds of their followers who by 
the eternal law of human nature had to react from the 
extreme of depression to that of elation. Thus the love and 
early devotion of their disciples reasserted itself in the 
fondest creations of their imaginations and all these super- 
men arose from the dead, some sooner, some later, and 
were transfigured in splendor to lead mankind as realized 
ideals upward and onward in his course. Those who prac- 
ticed these cults had chiefly to rise and die again, not liter- 
ally, but in a proxy, vicarious way and as really as their 
imaginations surcharged with sympathetic emotion could 
make possible. This exercise was regarded as the chief in- 
itiation into life because this fictive experience was an im- 
munity bath against being permanently deiDressed by any, 
or all, ills of life or abnormally exalted by good fortune, 
and it symbolized the subordination of self to the service 
of the race. All this gave a psychic unity as well as elas- 
ticity and rebound, because if our psyche splits or dualizes 
at all, it is into a pleasure versus pain consciousness, and 
this experience makes each state amenable to and certain to 
react into the other. Indeed, every Atlantean religion re- 
quired its youth to be thus inducted into life by a curricu- 
lum of hardships and pain, hunger, exposure and anxiety, 



78 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

to be followed by release, joy, feasting, and exhilaration, 
as indeed every novel and drama requires of its hero. This 
arms the soul against depression and discouragement, on 
the one hand, and the dangers of too much pleasure, on the 
other, and makes it mobile as it should be, up and down 
the algedonic scale. 

In early Atlantean days there were no priests in our 
sense presiding over magic formulae or invested with super- 
natural sanctions, but only *' heart-formers, " trained in a 
college created to equip men and women for special work 
with school children and youth half a day in every seven. 
Here they were taught, as they advanced, a carefully con- 
sidered course of fetishism, totemism, sun, rock, and moun- 
tain worship, followed by that of the moon, sun, planets, 
and stars, leading up to that of the infinite ethereal vault. 
Then came cults of Mother Earth, sea, water, cloud, fire, 
and lightning, herbage, trees, and finally of man himself 
idealized and more or less totemized. Each cult had its 
myths, legends, rites, processionals, dances, and its col- 
lection of objects deemed sacred, and its paraphernalia, 
with appropriate hymns, in order to develop poetic atti- 
tudes and interests in nature recapitulating that of the 
race. Thus, each cult had, too, in a sense, a bible of its own. 
Great stress was laid in bringing home impressively the 
lives and achievements of all great religious organizers and 
leaders of mankind, and all the days of all the weeks of the 
year were named after these ; what corresponds to our Sab- 
bath deriving its name from a man preeminent for religious 
insight and pioneering. Each day at school was opened 
by a brief account and uplift lesson from the life of some 
one of these great and holy ones, and they finally became 
so many that it was decided to have a two-year cycle of 730 
days in order to give them all place in the calendar. At 
the end of this course each could choose his cult from among 
them all or could neglect all. In this field there was no 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 79 

drill, memorization, or examination required, but all these 
were provided for those who desired. Some eventually 
chose to revere one, some several, and yet other some no 
deity, realizing that all were only symbols, incarnations, or 
guides to Mmm. Malignant deities, though often believed 
in, were never recognized by the ''heart-formers," and all 
superstitions in this domain were regarded as simply exces- 
sive belief, and never antagonized, but more or less re- 
spected and tenderly treated till better forms of expressing 
the ideals and sentiments they embodied had been pro- 
vided, so that growth might be normal and without any 
abatement of the ardor of faith. In children and youth 
superstitions were regarded rather as rank weeds indica- 
tive of the richness of the soil. One or another cult was 
often advised or prescribed to individuals, either as a 
therapy or as best fitted to regulate life with their peculiar 
temperament and circumstance, or as we are now beginning 
to prescribe philosophies, to fit diatheses or correct defi- 
ciencies. To these '* heart-formers" all, old and young, 
were encouraged to go or were sent for all kinds of moral 
perversities — one because he was getting proud, another 
wealthy, another cruel, others dishonest, licentious, lazy, 
selfish, etc. They came to these to be straightened as men 
in our era go to doctors to be physically inspected. 

Not only was all conflict between science and religion 
unheard of, but there was no dogma and no question as 
to the historicity of religious founders any more than we 
care whether Hamlet or Don Quixote or William Tell were 
real personages, for the pragmatic value of all these lives, 
which is the central one, lies in their esthetic and moral 
effects, since the supreme criterion in this field is not truth 
but goodness, all but the good being false. Thus all, 
whether narratives, philosophy, or apologue that worked 
well, was, some more, some less, sacred and inspired, so 
that the only canon of Holy Writ was the changing one 



80 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

which the consensus of the competent deemed of most 
worth. All their theology was the higher psychology of 
the folksoul as it groped its way upward, choosing the right 
and avoiding the evil and projecting its great creations on 
the sky or in the hearts of men. Practically men were ac- 
counted religious in Atlantis if they were truly altruistic 
and not predominantly self-seeking, and all here were 
taught to die cheerfully, contemplating the good they had 
done. 

As to a future life there were all views. Some believed in 
ghosts, even revenient ones; others, that sometime, some- 
where, somehow, personal identity would be continued be- 
yond the grave, but shrank from definiteness or even proof 
here lest the imagery that satisfied the heart be faulty and 
if all were staked on proof it would expose their fond hope 
to the possibility of disproof. Some held to a hereafter 
with rewards and punishments in another world and in- 
sisted that justice demanded nothing less. Yet others 
held that good was its own reward and evil its own punish- 
ment. Very many held that man's ultimate fate was ab- 
sorption into Mawi and that this was the goal supreme to 
be desired, for it was not only surcease from care and striv- 
ing, but a homecoming of man to his origin. To make per- 
sonal happiness hereafter the motive of this life was deemed 
vulgar, transcendental selfishness. In short, for the Atlan- 
teans life here was so rich and so prolonged that most had 
no very active wish to live again and there was no thanato- 
phobia or morbid dread of death as with man to-day, who 
on the average is cut off in his prime, while so many suffer 
a kind of Herodian slaughter that real senescence, with its 
great and growing life weariness, weanings, and nepenthes, 
has become for us almost unknown. All shades of these 
beliefs were found, but there was no disputing about them, 
for they were regarded as matters of individual intellectual 
taste, or perhaps idiosyncrasy. Thus it is plain that there 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 81 

"was no such, thing as an established orthodoxy, or even pre- 
vailing standards of belief. * ' One world at a time and this 
one now," was a phrase often heard. It almost seemed 
as though each had his own creed, or a variant of one, or else 
none at all, and each believed in one, many, or no gods, and 
observed sacred days and services or not, as he felt in- 
clined. Thus in the same family it often occurred that the 
children were crass fetishists, the parents honored the great 
nature deities, and the grandparents held that all godff 
were mere idols symbolic of the one universal principle, or 
else projections of man himself or Active agents of his 
wishes, recognizing the persistency of the tendency of our 
soul to personate the manifold activities of the infinite One 
and All from which the worlds came and into which they 
return. 

The ''heart-formers" were intent only that there be as 
many and diverse expressions of the religious instinct as 
possible, in order that all human capabilities and inclina- 
tions might be appealed to, and these guides felt that 
should they become proselytes to the views they preferred, 
they would have been false to their trust and would have 
acted as if man were made for religion rather than, con- 
versely, religions for man. No one believed that there was 
any religion, cult, or faith that was best for all. As a re- 
sult of this sentiment very few Atlanteans were without 
religion of some kind, and no one was ever heard of who 
denounced or repudiated them all. 

The "heart-formers," besides their stated functions above 
indicated with the young, diverged as time went on into 
many special forms of activity. Some kept open hours for 
something not unlike our confessional at its best. Those 
with sore or perverted consciences came to have them 
soothed or straightened. Those with bad habits came here 
for cure ; those with morbid ideas came to be analyzed and 
guided iQ the pathway of life as Virgil led Dante. Some 



82 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

became advisers in the moral problems connected with busi- 
ness, not scrupling to visit and reprove those guilty of 
practices unjust and harmful to the morale of the com- 
munity. Some gave experienced and expert counsel to those 
intending wedlock, or were often called upon to solve peac- 
ably intricate and difficult marital problems. Yet others 
recited the great deeds of heroes of the past and the pres- 
ent at the festivals and told in epic elevation the thrilling 
romances of these and of the epoch-makers in religion, su- 
pervised dramatic presentations of such themes at the great 
festivals, and thus kept alive and pure the great traditions 
of the past. Some became very expert in what we should 
call professional arbitration, before there were any formal 
judges, and after their fall as above described, passed upon 
all kinds of personal disagreements, and these men were 
skilled in the use of ancient maxims and precedents from 
the most revered legends of the race. Some visited the sick 
and afflicted and sought to administer not only consolation 
but mental healing and even material relief. 

The ''heart-formers'* did their best and most intensive 
work with pubescents and early adolescents, when more time 
was given to them. Each boy by the male and each girl 
by the female ''formers'' was formally and progressively 
told the sacred mysteries of sex personally as his and her 
own powers of mind and body grew and as need arose, so 
that none was surprised by the development of normal 
processes. Anatomy, physiology, hygiene, and pathology 
were judiciously drawn upon, and the responsibility to 
transmit the holy torch of life undimmed to the innumer- 
able unborn was set forth as the chief end of life. Every- 
thing became of supreme value only when, and in the de- 
gree in which, it took hold on that most ancient wealth and 
worth, heredity, and nothing was truly acquired until it 
had sunk so deep as to make parenthood more effective 
even for those who did not live to see their offspring bom. 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 83 

Here self-control must be rigorous for the probationary 
years before maturity was attained. There must be no 
feeble and paltering concession to the clamor of the flesh. 
In aid of this new self-knowledge, self-reverence, and self- 
control regimen was now hardy and robeorous. Athleticism 
was cultivated to develop every part and function of the 
body to its uttermost and mental work must occasionally 
be by intense calentures, and the resources of the second- 
breath that draws upon residual and racial possibilities at 
will, or what some of us now call the adrenalin diathesis, 
was fostered with great care, because it was clearly seen 
that every zest and interest in every field in any degree set 
a backfire to lust ; while at the same time the spirit of nil 
admdrari and inertia of mind, which is the result of a life 
of drill and routine, directly enhances temptation and 
weakens resistance to it. Each must thus have some muse 
and cultivate and develop a regimen of inspiration. Thus, 
for a few years everjrthing must serve the purposes of sub- 
limation of the crude sex impulse and tend to long-circuit 
or vicariate for it, like secondary sexual traits in animals, 
who are our models in this respect. Calentures and ereth- 
isms there must be, and the all-important problem is to 
direct this most plastic and metamorphic tendency upward 
and not allow it to grovel. 

Hardship, fatigue, plain living, enthusiasms, activity, 
and cleanliness were preliminary training to the solemn and 
festal initiation which now began with the sacred right of 
circumcision. Then followed a fast of two days with iso- 
lation and solitude day and night close to Nature, during 
which each was supposed to have some significant dream or 
vision, to the interpretation of which great care was given. 
Many here first found or met their goru, or double, formed 
ideals, made resolutions, etc. These doubles often became 
a kind of protective presence which attended individuals 
through life, approving or reproving, and occasionally ap- 



84 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

pearing in imaginal forms at critical moments. Then came 
the initiation proper, which took various forms in various 
provinces. It had certain general features always and 
everywhere essentially the same. The novitiate, or candi- 
date for adulthood, always died and was entombed, some- 
times almost literally and sometimes more symbolically, 
heard a funereal estimate of his good and bad traits and 
what each tended to make him, and thus realized the vir- 
tues he might attain or the evil ways in which he was 
liable to stray. First there was darkness and gloom, with 
dirge-like music, chants, and misereres, and even mourn- 
ing by parents and friends; then a period of silence and 
isolation again. Then after an interval more or less pro« 
longed, according to the temper and needs of each, lights 
were gradually seen and springtide pastoral strains were 
faintly and then more loudly heard. The symbolic tomt, 
opened and the youth or maiden stepped forth, shed his ot 
her shroud, and was clad in festal attire, and there was 
joy, feasting, and festive dancing. A symbolic mark was 
branded or tattoed upon the breast like an individual totem, 
and this was followed by often very prolonged initiation 
ceremonies into all the larger life of the community. With 
this the resurrection program terminated. Henceforth 
youth which had been served must serve. This new life of 
altruism was now consecrated to the gens. Childish ac- 
couterments, plays, and ways were put aside, although some 
old and cherished toys and treasures were commonly, and 
sometimes had to be, preserved, and these might later be 
given to friends as a mark of the very closest personal 
bonds, for the day of manhood and womanhood had now 
dawned. Fathers assumed new duties to their sons and 
mothers to their daughters and talked on all matters in 
which they were personally interested, with none of the 
previous reserves, because with the majority now and thus 
attained each youth became a corporate member of the com- 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 85 

nrnnity and of the state and acquired new rights and far 
more new duties. Each, too, was given some special re- 
sponsibility for a younger child of the same sex, like our 
*^big brother" or *' sister" function, and each in turn was 
given, or was allowed to choose, some older person outside 
his family as a kind of guardian or godparent who watched 
over him in a general way and to whom he could turn for 
counsel in every emergency. The friendships thus estab- 
lished between old and young constituted a imique bond, 
one of the virtues of which was that it incited both master 
and ward to d6 nothing that the other could deem un- 
worthy. The older members of this triad must always set 
good examples, and the younger must always emulate them. 
Only the ' ' heart-formers ' ' were allowed thus to adopt more 
than one ward, and the favorite among these often had 
many; but no man of any repute lacked one, and he was 
in honor bound, however pressing his other duties, not to 
neglect this, and was held accountable if anything pre- 
ventable went seriously amiss with his counselorship. 
These homosexual friendships never degenerated here as 
they did in ancient Greece. Indeed so pure were they 
kept that it was often suggested that budding girls, be- 
sides their female, have a male, and boys also a female ad- 
viser, but the records so far deciphered do not show that 
this plan was ever systematically put into practice, al- 
though in sporadic cases it was adopted and seems to have 
worked well, especially after wedlock, when fathers-in-law 
and mothers-in-law were often inclined to assume this func- 
tion, sometimes with, and sometimes without, the full con- 
sent of the younger member of the triad. 

The age of thirty was the normal and most frequent age 
of marriage for men and twenty-one for women. If at 
thirty-five a man, or at twenty-five a woman, remained un- 
wed and was held well and competent, they began to be 
regarded with suspicion as perhaps addicted to secret vice 



86 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

or at least as slackers, were admonished and required to 
show cause, and if they persisted, were finally assigned spe- 
cial and compulsory duties and progressively taxed to atone 
for their recreancy. "Wedlock at this epoch was always sol- 
emnized by the ' * heart-formers, ' * who regulated all the pre- 
liminaries and were in a sense held responsible for pre- 
venting unwise matings. They, too, alone had power to 
divorce if this seemed, all things considered, wise, and to 
negotiate the terms of separation. They also saw to it that 
cases of bastardy, rare as it was in this chaste race until 
its civilization began to totter toward its fall, were penal- 
ized by making public the name of the father and requiring 
him to support his child and its mother till the age of 
adolescent initiation. 

So closely associated were esthetics and true piety that 
all great art in Atlantis was religious in the broad sense in 
which the latter was interpreted, for beauty and goodness 
in their essence were always deemed one and inseparable. 
Hence the productions of the painter, musician, poet, sculp- 
tor, architect, storj^wright, and dramatist were considered 
classic or vulgar in proportion as they ministered to the 
elevation and strengthening of the lofty sentiments of 
which religion is the root. Thus, there was little room for 
art censorship, but when it was necessary it was merciless 
and effective. In many provinces and diverse climes and 
races of Atlantis there were endless varieties of local color, 
diversity of dress, fates, traditions, etc., just, as we have 
seen, there were many religions, so that art here had both 
a wide field and the purest, strongest, and most inexhausti- 
ble wealth of incentives and materials on which to draw. 
The training of the Atlanteans gave them a rare facility, 
which we have almost entirely lost, of seizing, and holding 
to, the new and at the same time of clinging with tenacity 
to the old. Hence progressive as they were, they adhered 
tenaciously to the old ways to which they could find re- 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 87 

course "when they were impelled to retreat for a time from 
hard and stern present reality, to master which meant prog- 
ress versus relapse toward the easy ways of their own child- 
hood and that of the race. This made them almost pas- 
sionate lovers of the naive, of which childhood is the best 
paradigm and exemplar, and thus they remained peculiarly 
sensitized to every manifestation of the spontaneity and 
creativeness which is the sign manual of the true artiste 
Nearly every aspect of nature and of human life, and all 
the great achievements and accomplishments of man thus 
had their artists with pen, pencil, brush, chisel, builder ^s 
square, and plummet, but the mere copyist they held to be 
a shallow tyro intent on merely exhibiting his skill and 
lacking all tonic quality and morale, and failing utterly to 
humanize nature. They had no prudery regarding nudity, 
if only it had a rcmon d'etre, or made a moral appeal, but 
banished as vulgar and meretricious everything of this kind 
which taught no lesson. Of art for art's sake they knew 
nothing. Thus impressionists, cubists, and ultra-realists 
were to them quaint and curious, but essentially childish in 
their appeal. From all we so far know the Atlanteans must 
have been much more eminent in art than any race of our 
era, excelling us perhaps even more here than in any other 
field, but the chief trait and probablj the chief cause of 
this preeminence was the fact that art had been up to the 
very acme of its influence strictly in the service of religion 
and morale. But the details of this, too, we must leave for 
a later, and more special, publication, and only sketch the 
cause of the decline from this high estate. 

This began with the demand for a textus receptus or 
catalogue and canon in authorized version of the best litera- 
ture in this wide field. The best must be formally gath- 
ered, edited, set apart, made intact, and transmitted as 
authoritative and final. This collection must be given a 
magic origin and character which sets it apart from, and 



88 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

above, all other creations of man in this field. Indeed, it 
must be ascribed to the authenticity of a divine being and 
be fabled to have come down from, and been revealed by, 
Heaven itself. This collection must become the book fetish, 
the supreme object of a bibliolatry unknown before. Thus 
a college of wise men set about collecting, compiling, some- 
times themselves writing, rejecting, unifying, and elimi- 
nating inconsistencies, but in general accepting as they 
stood a few of the older texts, and giving out that in this 
"work they were supernaturally guided in their inclusions 
and exclusions. In this way they evolved a library made 
up of smaller and larger works, and came to believe that 
when their own work was complete the age of inspiration 
had closed forever, so that nothing more could be added. 
''This and only this, thus and only thus spake the gods, 
who would henceforth remain forever mute.'^ The pro- 
ductions thus edited, agreed on, and adopted, were said to 
contain all the essential things that man needed to know 
or do. It was multiplied by every scribal art and elegantly 
copied by experts who devoted their lives to this work; it 
was later reproduced in thousands of forms, bound in one 
massive, or many smaller, volumes ; it was elaborately com- 
mented on and concordances of every word and phrase were 
made; it was put into every known tongue, and interpre- 
ters of it were trained who had to vow that they would 
defend its every clause and perhaps know no other book. 
To its texts magic power was sometimes ascribed to exor- 
cise, heal, convert, or they were thought to work miracles, 
and occasionally even the very form of its letters were 
thought surcharged with mystic meanings inscrutable save 
to the elect. To injure or defile it was a crime ; to doubt it, 
"blasphemy; and in all these ways it was sought to make 
it the only rule of faith and practice. Organized leaders, 
with minds subtle by nature and trained for this purpose, 
expounded, explained, compared, and found hidden mean- 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 89 

ing in what was obvious. Corporations grew rich publish- 
ing and diffusing it, sending their agents to insist that 
every household and every individual, old and young, own 
it. All must study it, perhaps read it yearly, memorizing 
sentences from it. It was often invested with talismanic 
power; crude tongues were given consistency and stability 
by having it translated into them, and there were occa- 
sionally weak-souled bibliomaniacs who carried it always 
about with them as a sacred charm to ward off all evils. It 
was said thus to have stopped bullets in battle on their 
way to the heart, and there were many fanatics who talked 
almost exclusively in its idioms and applied it in and out 
of season to all happenings large and small in the life 
abdut them, sometimes launching its imprecations against 
those who sought to moderate their railings. 

This had hardly been accomplished before it was felt 
needful to draw up on the basis of these scriptures a set of 
creeds or a body of holy doctrine. Over the former, At- 
lantean councils and houses of delegates for several genera- 
tions had argued but could not agree, and so several came 
into vogue. These were supposed to embody the essential 
verity itself for all time, and each demanded universal 
and unreserved assent ; while the body of doctrine was left 
to be formulated by great scholiarchs as each saw the 
truth. Like the chosen canon all the creed-makers had 
repudiated all but the anthropomorphic faiths. The infinite 
power that made and sustains all was thus cast into the 
form of a human personality, despite aU the limitations 
this must always involve. Instead of many there must now 
be only one deity, and all others were either diabolized or 
condemned to extinction. This one supreme personality 
which man had evolved was now conceived as preexisting 
from eternity, as having aU possible power and knowledge, 
as infallible and unchanging, just and terrible in his judg- 
ments, a bitter hater of all rival cults and gods and intent 



90 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

upon their extermination. His altars reeked with the blood 
and smoke of sacrificial victims ; yet his supreme claim to 
reverence was his inexorable and pitiless sense of justice 
from which he never swerved. No one had ever seen him 
and lived, and although he filled immensity, he could and 
sometimes did take visible form, although it was a sacri- 
lege to represent him in art save by some mystic symbolism. 
This impossible and inconceivable being with all these con- 
tradictory attributes existed alone for eons beyond number, 
but at length grew weary of solitude and so created or 
secreted the universe and stellar world, which slowly 
evolved through long ages till at last on this man appeared, 
groping his way upward in the dim light of reason. Na- 
tions arose and perished in the wide confines of the Atlan- 
tean continent. Men grew sordid and selfish and the ineffa- 
ble one gi'ew wroth and at one time almost resolved upon 
man's annihilation. But gradually he seemed to retreat, 
become remote and afar, to have grown indifferent, and all 
belief in so metaphysical a being which the pundits had 
evolved appeared about to perish from the earth. Now 
God is dead, the people cried. There never is, or was, any 
such all-father and never could be. Give us back our ever- 
present Mana and its manifold embodiments in Mother 
Earth, sun, moon, trees, animals, and man, they said. Give 
us our old sages and cults and free us from these canonical 
compilations. It was at this period that a unique but 
epoch-making step was taken which was almost without any 
analogue in our own era. The old ** heart-formers" at first 
added their urgency to that of the people and insisted that 
they could be given again their old pantheon human and 
sub-human, and that the exclusive cult of the absolute per- 
son be allowed to lapse. This, of course, the scholiarchs, 
who had to stand by both their canon and their dogma, 
opposed. Only after decades of controversy, during which 
many provinces lapsed to crass idolatries, and others, 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 91 

fewer but more insightful, found refuge in mysticisms of 
many shades, was a great compromise effected. The ' ' heart- 
formers" relinquished their plea for all sub-human deities, 
while the scholiarchs abandoned their effort directly to im- 
personate the infinite, and both agreed that a new, but 
purely human, individuality must now be fabricated as 
the supreme representative of man and at the same time an 
incarnation of deity which, both parties agreed, was in 
fact only Mansoul in general, because the genu^ homo was 
the ultimate goal of all the developmental processes. 

So among the many savior legends of dying and revenient 
heroes they chose as the best modulus or point de repere the 
dim tradition of a peasant (because he must appeal to the 
sympathies of the proletariat ) in a remote and little known 
province (so that while his career had a real historic core, 
it was so obscure as to admit of the most plastic and ideal 
transformations to bring out its maximal effectiveness) ; his 
career must be a masterpiece of pathos (because this brings 
the closest of all rapports in gregarious man), and after his 
most tragic death and interment he must come back a con- 
queror over death itself, which had now become, as it was 
not in Atlantis of yore, man's supreme object of fear. Fi- 
nally, as a reluctant concession to the scholiarchs, it was 
represented that this totemic person should in some way be 
connected with their great personified Mana as his goal, if 
not his source, although his own life purpose was to reduce 
the number and to limit the degree of his attributes. Both 
the story and the doctrine of this new incarnation had to be 
evolved. The first, which involved careful mosaic v/ork 
among many sources, was entrusted to a carefully chosen 
group of the * ' heart formers, ' ' and their result was made a 
supplementary sacred canon. The doctrine, which must be 
semipopular, was confected by the scholiarchs. Thus here 
we do find some analogy to the distinctions between the 
Pauline and Petrine trends in our New Testament. Thus 



92 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

evolved it is not strange that the new evangel of the Atlan- 
teans was far more elaborate, its parts more harmonized 
than all its motifs, more richly dight with incident, its pre- 
cepts more numerous, and the descent of its hero to the 
depths of agony and his ascent to the heights of exaltation 
yet more moving and more completely complemental than 
in our great Jesus legend. The early achievements of this 
new embodiment of humanity were more thrilling and 
numerous ; his disappointments made a yet longer and more 
cumulative Iliad of woes and disasters ; his death was com- 
plete and utter both of body and soul and of all hope and 
for months afterwards despair settled on the earth. His 
erstwhile most enthusiastic followers had denounced him as 
an impostor and cursed his memory. His wisdom they now 
deemed folly. The stages of his return back to life which 
began with a faint hope were all of them seen by multi- 
tudes, and for long years he was said to have lived, wan- 
dered, and taught vast multitudes in many provinces, while 
his apotheosis at the end was a spectacle of such cosmic 
grandeur as the world had never seen before and will never 
behold again. Even the dead arose to see it, and many 
were mad with joy that the fear of man's arch enemy, 
death, which had brooded over the earth from the begin- 
ning, was now forever annihilated. Some even strove to 
represent this world savior as miraculously conceived and 
born as a more complete symbol of his filial relation to the 
One and All than was his putative ascension. But this 
symbolization of the relation of the individual man to the 
Infinite was deemed too crass and materialistic for even 
the most insistent will-to-believe to accept, and it was also 
thought to detract from the purity of his humanity. 

The effects of this, the greatest of all psychotherapeutic 
enterprises for the betterment of the folksoul, were every- 
where immediate and salutary. There was woven into this 
legend enough magic and miracle to appeal to, and to sat- 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 93 

isfy, those who wanted it, and also mystic idealism enongh 
to appeal to every intuitive power of the deepest souls, with 
pathos to melt and victory to exalt; while the offerings to 
the highest powers that were made from both the vegetable 
and the animal world sufficiently recognized and also pretty 
completely sublimated the cults of these sub-human objects 
of worship so that they slowly died but were transfigured in 
so doing. 

Now it was that there arose more strongly than ever be- 
fore a demand for stated forms of ritual and service to set 
forth with all the appanage of symbol, music, processional, 
drama, and poetry, the true life of man as thus epitomized 
and portrayed. There was also urgent need of organization, 
buildings and propaganda, so that there arose in the course 
of time an order or caste practically unknown before akin 
to our priesthood, which soon differentiated into many de- 
grees with diverse functions. Before their growing influ- 
ence the guild of ''heart-formers" declined. It was they 
who developed orthodoxies of both rites and creeds, inducted 
all who implicitly accepted their teachings and threatened 
and imprecated those who refused to do so, gathered in vast 
wealth that made their organization rich though accepting 
nothing for themselves. They vowed chastity, poverty and 
obedience, developed an educational system, an elaborate 
code all their own, and instituted orders of apprenticeship, 
and caused many young women to leave the world and 
devote themselves to this service as they had done. So 
attractive was the life of these enthusiastic devotees and 
so many of the best of both sexes entered upon this rule of 
life, that in the course of a few centuries Atlantis was 
largely peopled by the lower orders and stirps, and a 
period akin to our Dark Ages ensued during which the 
priesthood itself at first flourished and then declined. 

Thus we now enter an age in the religious history of 
Atlantis so extremely analogous to our own that we need 



^4 RECREATIONS OP A PSYCHOLOGIST 

not further detail it. There was the same long struggle 
between Church and State; the same hypertropjhy of 
anxiety about another life after this; there was a heaven 
and a hell no less elaborate, and there was the same phobic 
fetish of an awful judgment day impending; the same 
multiplication of schools and sects; the same tendency to 
magnify unimportant differences; the same faith in a 
vicarious atonement achieved from without, for and not 
by us, and drawn on by an act of faith. This priesthood 
bad a similar control over wedlock and death and burial 
rites, and as the people grew ignorant after the close of the 
schools, the pride and arrogance of the priests increased. 
They exacted tithes of rich and poor, built gorgeous tem- 
ples, acquired vast properties, vied with princes in the 
magnificence of their ceremonial vestments and retinues, 
were jealous of every kind of excellence outside their order, 
and strove to monopolize art, censor learning, and perse- 
cute innovations of life and opinion, as is the wont of our 
hierarchies. 

Then came the greatest and longest war in all the his- 
tory of Atlantis. In none of her wars in East or "West 
had the struggle been so bitter as in this conflict between 
spiritual and temporal powers. It grew from small begin- 
nings. In the far North was a hardy race that was proud, 
independent and prosperous. Here the priests deposed 
and confiscated all the holdings of the local prince, placed 
the people under a cruel and causeless ban, levied heavy 
fines which they sought to collect by force, and when all 
united to oppose them, the hierarchs here closed the tem- 
ples, suspended all their offices, and withdrew. Only a 
small band of native monks remained faithful to their 
people and declared their spiritual independence and laid 
the foundations for a new religious regime. It was thus 
and here that the great war began, and from here the 
revolt spread to more central provinces. Never was war- 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 95 

fare more cruel and waged with such barbaric atrocity. 
Families were divided in nearly every hamlet as it spread, 
property and wealth vanished, and vast areas were some- 
times almost depopulated. Gaunt famine stalked the 
streets, conflagrations destroyed once prosperous towns 
and cities, and disease and pestilence swept thousands 
away whom all the other horrors had spared. Armies on 
both sides grew smaller but they fought on with increased 
desperation. 

After a generation of desperate conflict it extended to 
every corner of the realm ; the hierarchs, realizing that their 
cause was lost, decided, as a last desperate step, to suspend 
all their offices. This they did after fulminating an awful 
curse upon the land, invoking pests to consume all the 
vegetable products of the soil, murrain to destroy all the 
flocks and herds, which were to remain putrefying and 
unburied where they died, cursing all the food and drink 
of their enemies that it might become poisonous, solemnly 
condemning them to eternal torture after death, and for- 
bidding women to bear children. Then carefully providing 
themselves with as large stores as possible of all things 
needful, nearly all the priesthood of all orders withdrew to 
the temples, taking with them those of the holy women 
they chose and who would come, and here for years they 
lived in comfort and isolation. Sometimes even these sa- 
cred strongholds were attacked by riotous mobs of frenzied 
people, but both the ediflces and their occupants were still 
generally protected by a certain superstitious awe invet- 
erate from a long past. 

Thus it came that people once the most pious of races 
the earth has ever seen were without religion. Because 
there were none to marry them lust developed, and be- 
cause there could be no form of burials the dead were in- 
terred like animals. There were none to christen and bless 
the newly-born, so that children were few and their lot 



96 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

pitiful. There were none to placate the gods, who seemed 
wroth with man and bent upon his extermination, or at 
least they seemed to have withdrawn from earth and 
showed no further concern for the sons of men. There 
were none to make offerings to placate them, and the 
only way by which men could escape eternal suffering 
was closed. In some places priests were implored to re- 
sume their functions, but refused, or more often made 
conditions that were impossible — restoration of all their 
confiscated wealth, abject submission to all their decrees, 
complete temporal power, solemn reasseverations of be- 
lief and pledges of submisison to the ecclesiastical order, 
which was now more than ever impossible. Thus, many 
relapsed to paganism and idolatry more vulgar and de- 
graded than had ever been known in Atlantis before, while 
some few strove, often with more or less local success, to 
restore the old order of things as it had been under the 
** heart-formers" from such vestiges of their cult as tradi* 
lion and the records could supply. 

The dominant sentiment of most of the best Atlanteans 
was a deep resentment at the entire priestly polity of over- 
regimentation of the religious life and the hyperorganiza- 
tion of the normally free movements of the human spirit 
which had so materialized and mechanized the higher life 
of the soul. The chief reclamation was against the setting 
up of another world kingdom which abated the zest for 
making the most and best of this world. This, they said, 
had dualized the very soul of man into a diesseits and a 
jemseits consciousness, setting the immanent and trans- 
cendent over against each other, and this had led to the 
bold proclamation that all religion was a pathological hal- 
lucination. All priestcraft they now came to deem a ma- 
lign plot to undermine the sanity and peace of mind of 
the world, the nightmare from which they were now awak- 
ened, and they felt they must arouse their fellowmeru 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 97 

Perhaps it -was some faint and far-off echo of this propa- 
ganda that reached Confucius, impelling him to dispense 
with all that was transcendental and supermundane in his 
doctrine and to teach only the personal and civil virtues 
that make for the best conditions here. "Let us never 
think again of a hereafter of gods, or, if we can help it, 
even of death," they said, *'for we can never know; and 
let us turn deaf ears to all mystagogues, Uliuminati^ and 
hierophants. " A few fanatics within this group advo- 
cated and even attempted not only looting but sometimes 
burning of the temples and of the holy men and women 
now gathered in them and making a tabula rasa in order 
to symbolize '*a new departure without all these parasitic 
excrescences which had brought so many woes upon us. 
Thus only can we make a new start on secular and lay 
lines." But these drastic measures found but little favor 
among the masses, for they still held their self -deposed 
guides in too much awe. 

The most general result of all these long wars of arms 
and of opinions was that most of the old bonds that had 
united men were loosened or broken. Each individual 
did, felt, and thought as he inclined until even parties, lo- 
cal communities, and interests lost their old cohesion, so- 
cial disintegration grew apace, and the very instinct of 
the herd, normally so strong in man, seemed to suffer an 
eclipse. Egoism everywhere was rife. Even the armies 
that remained lost the spirit of discipline and often re- 
volted against their officers, and their separate divisions 
evolved military programs that it was impossible to har- 
monize, as the resentment against all authority, already so 
prevalent in other fields, as we have seen, wrought out its 
dire consequences in this domain. Even where there 
seemed some faint hope of ultimate restoration in some 
form of what had been lost, there was now none. Love, 
friendship, and with them joy seemed to have taken flight 



98 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

from the earth, and in their place was only distrust, sus- 
picion, jealousy, lust, greed, and underneath all a deep 
half -unconscious sense that some dire and supreme tragedy 
impended. There was a vague dread of doom which none 
could formulate and which was, therefore, all the more op- 
pressive. Some ineluctable decree of fate seemed to have 
been pronounced which awaited only its execution. So 
acute and widespread was this sense of final disaster that 
many of the most earnest and insightful men and women 
yielded to despair and took refuge in suicide from sheer 
pity for the lower state into which man had fallen. There 
were now no physicians for the body or for the soul, no 
justice, no learning, and no religion. Those who should 
have led in these domains and once did so had abandoned 
their function by a hararkiri decree tantamount to suicide 
for their order and had thus done all in their power to 
make life no longer worth living, and hence for the indi- 
vidual to end his own life seemed the ineluctable moral. 
Those who took this fatal course did so with imprecations 
upon all the revolters as their last message to those left 
behind. Finally there came to be something like a litany 
of curses decreed by and for those thus about to die by 
their own hand — "upon the * medicos' who had betrayed 
the health of the state; the apostles who had become the 
apostates of justice; upon the disciples who had become 
the traitors of learning and research; and on the priestly 
caste who had deserted their sacred office and refused all 
ministrations to man's spiritual nature, for these are the 
assassins of the state and our blood is upon their hands." 
Thus the Atlanteans might now almost be called a people 
without a soul. In our era many religions that have 
thrived must have been borrowed from other racial stocks 
and flourished by transplantation, but Atlantis comprised 
all the then known world and so there were no alien faiths 
that could be thus imported. All its human stock was im- 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 99 

paired; crime and vice were unpunished and tlius "unde- 
terred till the very instinct of order and justice seemed 
vanishing, ignorance and superstition unchallenged and 
everywhere increasing, all the restraints and stimuli that 
come from belief in a supplemental life of rewards and 
punishments swept away, they were left without gods in 
the world, and thus Atlantis stumbled on in its downward 
path, a prey to all the ills from which it had once been so 
uniquely immune. There were even no crude or savage 
stirps from which to restock the world by the regenera- 
tive infusion of new blood, and no vigor, wisdom, or public 
spirit to inaugurate any policy of arrest of the decline, 
still less of restoration. Indeed, there were no leaders, 
and such had been the rancor against all rule and author- 
ity that, had there been leadership, it would have found 
itself impotent. As if dimly anticipating that the end of 
things was fast approaching men gave themselves up to 
the frenzied quest of every gross and immediate pleasure 
still attainable. Rapine, debauchery, lust, and outrage 
abounded. But the end was still delayed, for there is an- 
other and yet more pathetic act with which the awful 
drama concludes. 

vn 

WOMAN AT HEB BEST AND WOEST 

In the good and great early days of Atlantean history 
woman was everywhere held in high respect. She, like 
man, had been large, strong, vital, and vigorous, but, as 
is her nature, was more generic, nearer to the life of the 
race and a better all-sided representative of it. She had 
been not only the priestess of the home, but man's best 
adviser and confidante, and the guidance of her intuitions 
had always been sought. There had never been a matriar- 
chate and there were no Amazons, but her sex had never 



100 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

lost a modicum of the religious regard which we often find 
among the primitives of our era inspired by her wondrous 
special functions. She not only swayed man by all these 
influences, but had in a sense fashioned him by molding 
his very diathesis in the first few years of life during 
which character is plastic. She sought no sophistication, 
but trusted her intuitive promptings, realizing that ac- 
cording to an old proverb, *'The eternally feminine im- 
pels the race onward, '* her soul was in a sense the ** pil- 
lar of cloud by day and of fire by night, '^ both to guide 
and to impel man to his goal. 

Many old women were venerated as seeresses, or were 
deemed to be custodians of the half -mystic, traditional < 
wisdom such as Plato ascribed to his instructress, a quality i 
which in our less evolved civilization has led men to ascribe 
to them the most diverse attributes, such as fates, furies, 
pythonesses, oracles, witches, muses, etc. Their insights 
were never regarded as uncanny or their influence ma- 
lign, but they were generally looked upon with such re-' 
spect that young women no longer dreaded or concealed 
their senescence but more often looked forward to it with 
longing. Grandmothers were revered in every household, 
and those fortunate enough to have two or more were 
thought specially favored; while great-grandmothers, who 
were not uncommon, were consulted by all their household 
in everything deemed important enough to be worthy of 
their attention. Their counsel, especially in all domestic,, 
social, and religious matters, was generally implicitly and 
reverently followed. All men charged with large public 
or private affairs chose one or more of these sage women as^ 
his confidante or adviser. Never in our era has old agej 
in women been so noble, so dignified, and so worthy ofj 
the reverence here bestowed upon it; nor, we may add,' 
has their estate so often been envied by men. 

Not only were honeymoons unknown and the first days 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 101 

that followed wedlock made as nearly as possible sample 
days of subsequent life, marked by daily separation and 
absorption each in his or her occupation, but these unions 
were regarded as the beginnings, and not the end, of the 
romance of life. Even the tales, legends, romances, and 
dramas, which ended here, were deemed more or less im- 
proper, while all the best of them were devoted to the de- 
scriptions of the mutual adjustments, revelations, correc- 
tions, supplementations, and refinements of each by each 
after wedlock, or else were designed as warnings against 
the fatal errors in these processes — misunderstandings, un- 
reasonable exactions, causeless suspicions, undue sensual- 
ity, and jealousies, etc. Each party was made to realize 
that it was vastly easier to win than to hold affection, and 
since, as we have seen, failure to do the latter involved 
separation, the methods and spirit of courtship must be 
maintained through life, for there was no legal or religious 
bond to be relied on to perpetuate a loveless union, so 
that these were almost unknown or impossible in early 
Atlantis. If, as rarely happened, a husband fell a victim 
to inebriation, gossip became curious about his home table 
and the attractiveness of his domestic circle. If he sought 
other women, gossip suspected that the wife, who had every 
advantage of position, propinquity, safety, and seclusion, 
had not surrounded the most sacred part of the marital 
relation with all the subtle charms of allurement, of very 
gradual approach and finally the full abandonment of 
which this relation is capable and without which it is 
liable to lapse, for what married man, they said, could 
possibly forsake all this for a few wild hours of surrepti- 
tious orgy with purchasable favors ? If a wife went astray, 
the husband was suspected to be at fault, for it was felt 
she was probably a victim of his neglect, over-absorption 
in outside affairs, failure to study and adjust to her na- 
ture and needs, or at least to her moods and fancies, or 



102 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

that he had become less, not more, a lover, the re- 
verse of which should be the case, with every year of 
domestic companionship ; or perhaps he had been wanting 
in thoughtful protection or had shown the imperfection of 
his true paternal feeling by relaxation of tenderness when 
it was most needed, viz., at the time when from being his 
mistress his partner's life began to be transfigured by 
motherhood. If then he had allowed her trust in him, 
which is so often tried and strained at this season, to 
falter and becloud her bliss over her new-born, it was well 
understood that this impaired her true maternal function 
and handicapped the future of the chUd. All these as- 
pects of married life were the favorite theme of fiction in 
these golden days of Atlantean history, and all this fa- 
vored youth, health, and longevity, so that women bore 
eugenic children at sixty and were fully senescent only at 
eighty. 

Women held property independently of their husbands, 
and because of the communal tables above described and 
the *' groves," had much leisure, and so could work in the 
gardens, fields, or enter any occupation they chose. The 
ambition of nearly every one was to be a good mother, and 
to this end most were willing and eager to subordinate every 
other. To them, too, were left by general consent the 
methods of dealing with young children, and most affairs 
connected with religion were predominantly in their 
hands. They, too, were the chief coadjutors of the *' heart- 
formers." They kept somewhat informal, but effective, 
censorship over public and private morals. If a young 
man became profligate, they withdrew from all association 
with him, as they did from all men who offended the public 
conscience by extortion, flagrant dishonesty, and unpa- 
triotic or flagitious conduct. Against matrimonial al- 
liances with such offenders it was a part of the duty of 
the matrons to warn young girls, and thus in nearly every 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 103 

community some of the mature women came to be selected 
out by an unformulated consensus to advise innocent girls 
about to marry concerning the duties, rights, and oppor- 
tunities of their new relation. The care of these matrons, 
too, extended to young wives and especially young mothers. 
While love was regarded as indispensable to happy unions 
and as generally involving a kind of mystic intuitive wis- 
dom with which it was a serious matter to interfere, still 
their idea of Cupid was not that he was a blind boy, but 
rather a maiden with eyes very wide open and not very 
liable to lead astray if only the young were given a wide 
basis of selection. Thus, the matrons provided and pre- 
sided over manifold occasions, some more, some less, stated, 
where nubile youth and maidens could meet and become 
acquainted, judge, compare, and elect. All elementary, 
and later all the highest, forms of education, were open 
alike to both sexes, although it was very early found that 
there was a great and natural difference in the fields to 
which each was drawn, as well as in the kind and strength 
of interest and the most effective methods. 

All women wore a kind of trouser from waist to knee, 
and over this a short peplum, tunic, or camisole. Both 
these garments might have any desired length, texture, or 
design. Most wore stockings and heelless sandals, and 
there was little or no headgear save as a protection against 
sun, cold, or rain. Any or no overgarment was worn, 
according to ^he taste or comfort of the individual, but 
this had the widest range, for there was no tyranny of 
fashion, and the first law of dress was that it must feel 
right (i.e., smooth, harsh, stiff, or flexible) to the wearer, 
rather than appeal to onlookers. All garments must per- 
mit the freest possible movement. Thus it was that indi- 
viduality and even originality in attire were fostered and 
each woman was stimulated to invent her own style of 
garment, and as each made her own clothes, good work- 



104 EECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

manship together with agreeable designs took precedence 
over quality and texture of material. The hair was worn 
long and was never cut after the age of five, and the coif- 
fure, though extremely diverse, as much so as all the fash- 
ions of all the people of our day together, was generally 
jsimple and without artifice. Cosmetics, once in very 
general use, had long since been banished. There were 
few ornaments worn save a ring at betrothal. The gar- 
ments of nubile girls were usually ornate and even very 
elaborate products of their own skill and artistic needle- 
work, as were their marriage trousseaus. All mothers 
were proud to wear on their breast a star, or, if they pre- 
ferred, a medal for each child, white for a girl and blue 
for a boy, and these were replaced by a black disk if a 
child had died. 

Modest as costumes always were here, each youth and 
maiden of marriageable age was reQ[uired to assemble at a 
local beach in the coldest season of the year, and first one 
sex and then the other, with only a loin-cloth, had to run, 
swim, dance, sing, and engage in often a long program of 
alternating sports in the open, no matter how inclement 
the weather. The patronesses of these festivals were the 
matrons, the '^heart-formers,'' and other invited guests. 
To strip well was regarded as a significant feature not 
only of body-keeping but of morale. As a result of these 
competitive exhibitions there were verdicts, with prizes, 
for excellence of both physical form and merit of perform- 
ance, and admonitions were meted out for neglect of body- 
keeping or training. Thus temper, disposition and char- 
acter in general, as well as symmetry, endurance, and 
assiduity were tested, and the incentive to make a credit- 
able showing at these festivals was strong throughout the 
year. In many ways, too, that need not here be detailed, 
these a^emblies proved a strong incentive to marital 
unions, for normally those of either sex whose excellence 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 105 

was here set forth were especially sought by the other; 
and thus, too, those shown inferior were neglected and 
so given a high-power motive to do better the next year. 
Later, in addition to this physical program, both youth 
and maidens here brought the best samples of their handi- 
work, and yet later, intellectual products, not only liter- 
ary and artistic but attested records made by the ' ' heart- 
formers" of any signal achievement made in any field 
during the year. Thus these festivals became a kind of 
assay of the quality of the marriageable material in the 
land. The youth of each sex were exhorted also to act 
always as if the noblest specimens of the other sex were 
present and looking on, and thus to avoid all that would 
seem unworthy of them. As a result of the spirit here 
fostered, adults, both men and women, came to feel that 
they must do nothing youth would condemn, thus realiz- 
ing their responsibility as pattern-setters for those in this 
golden age of life, so plastic to the influence and example 
of those older, wiser, and better known. There and then, 
as here and now, the sentiments and ideals of youth were 
recognized as the best material for prophecy, for, as adoles- 
cents feel to-day, the world will go a generation hence. 
Thus, these unique celebrations kept adulthood in vital 
and sympathetic touch with this best age of life and its 
inspirations, while in turn its best impulsions were also 
stimulated and given power to irrigate not only maturity 
but even old age. Nations and races, like individuals, 
have their adolescent stage, and this in Atlantis was the 
age when woman was at the acme of her power and in- 
fluence. 

In every community in Atlantis the married women 
united in sustaining a ''house" and also a hospital, both 
of which perhaps merit description. The ** house" varied 
greatly with the size of the community but always pro- 
vided three things; sleeping accommodations for guests, 



106 KECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

suites for social gatherings, and a hall for meetings. 
These ''houses'^ were always open, and here the women 
met and discussed formally and informally all the af- 
fairs of the community, somewhat as in our era men do in 
clubs. These confabulations were prevented from sinking 
to triviality or gossip-mongering by the *' courts of honor,*' 
through the pronouncements of which women in each 
community worked perhaps their chief influence. When- 
ever any man in the community, whether in public or in 
private life, had done an act of any kind of conspicuous 
merit or demerit, service or disservice, he and his deed 
were, as it were, placed on trial in one of these secret 
courts. Here any woman witness could be summoned, and 
if there were no volunteers to plead both pro and con, 
such were appointed. The findings of the courts were 
then posted in the hall and were modifiable or even re- 
versible for a year. In their final form they were com- 
municated by personal missive to the man approved or 
censured, and if the former, a button of a special form, 
size, and color, to which symbolic meanings were ascribed, 
was given, which those thus approved wore if they chose 
and which indicated that they held one or another form of 
honorary membership in the women's *' house.'* At first 
these badges were held in small esteem by men, but in 
time they came to be prized and regarded as insignia of 
a new order of nobility. Those given the highest of these 
insignia were granted entrance to the * 'houses'* at certain 
functions, always under carefully chosen chaperonage, and 
were here allowed certain other privileges and exemptions ; 
while those whose conduct was found dishonorable were 
subjected to more carefully drawn rules of ostracism with 
many features of what we might call boycott. In all this 
it was at first found extremely difficult to resist the plead- 
ings of friends, especially of good wives of offending hus- 
bands, but as time passed, precedents multiplied and 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 107 

standards grew more definite, recognized, and accepted, de- 
cisions more impartial, and the verdicts of these courts 
more influential in the lives of men of the community. 
Thus woman's great function of selection found here its 
most effective installation. Girls and unwed women were 
never admitted to these ** houses," but were initiated only 
upon marriage. 

The hospitals for and by women received those ap- 
proaching motherhood and also treated all the diseases 
most common in this sex ; trained, registered, and assigned 
to service midwives and nurses and also later social work- 
ers to keep watch over hygienic and moral conditions of 
children throughout the community, in both school and 
home, and also of girls in store, shop, factory, and home. 
They also had to cooperate with all the agencies of social, 
mental, and moral hygiene. Most nubile maidens had 
served a voluntary apprenticeship as probationers in these 
institutions, some of which delegated to each girl the 
special care of some family or child, and each of these 
caretakers had followed courses of instruction and demon- 
stration given at the hospitals to test her competence for 
such duties. Often these novices were found in wards as 
helpers, dispensing cheer, distributing flowers and dainties, 
reading at bedsides and to larger groups, thus making their 
later ministrations in their own, homes more effective. 
Some of the more hardy of them even attended operations 
and became accustomed to the sight of blood, while all be- 
came familiar by objective demonstration methods with 
first-aid treatment for many kinds of emergencies, as well 
as of the newly-born, the preparation and serving of food 
for the sick, the use of simple home medicaments, and thus 
they were given more or less proficiency in all we need for 
our Red Cross service. 

All the larger of these hospitals had an academic func- 
tion which in the best of them was the core and heart of all 



108 RECREATIONS OP A PSYCHOLOGIST 

their work. Here the hiological sciences were taught, each 
with a more or less sharply defined practical focus in eu- 
genics, which might perhaps be called the religion of these 
institutions. Botany and all the methods of cross-fertiliza- 
tion were taught in open gardens, hot-houses, and labora- 
tories. In zoology the basis of heredity and transmission 
of life in the animal world led up to human anatomy, 
physiology, and hygiene, a field in which human evolution 
culminates. Here was a field for which young women had 
special tastes and aptitudes, somewhat as young men had 
in physical and mechanical sciences. 

In this state of affairs, it seemed almost as if woman, 
after the first flush of the nubile instinct to attract favor- 
able attention to herself had attained its goal and faded, 
shunned all publicity and sought to limit her sphere of 
activity to those in her own immediate environment. Most 
seemed to prefer anonymity for even their best achieve- 
ments, almost as if they had accepted the ancient slogan 
now so often heard and attributed to man that ** those are 
fhe best women of whom least is heard." Certainly there 
was no rivalry of sex against sex, but rather each was 
recognized as the inspirer of most of the best traits in the 
other. The women most revered were those who bore 
and reared to maturity the most and best children, and in 
these their ''epistles known and read of all men'^ they took 
their chief pride and found their chief honor. Unostenta- 
tious as they were, they came thus to wield an influence 
upon Atlantean affairs far greater than they have ever 
wielded in any civilization of our era. In no land and 
age that we know has woman been so revered or so sympa- 
thetically and devotedly served. The very recognition of 
the all-dominance of unconscious factors in the human 
psyche which we are just beginning to attain gave to woman 
as the better embodiment of it than man a unique preemi- 
nence. That civilization is best, they felt and said, in 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 109 

whieli woman can be kept at her highest and best estate, 
and the best criterion of human institutions is how much 
it contributes to this end. "Woman's naive intuitions were, 
in a word, regarded as almost the sole and only guide 
given to man to direct and impel him upward in the path 
of progress. 

The decline from her high estate was gradual and almost 
imperceptible at first and involved so many factors and 
stages that it is hard to tell just when, how, or where it 
began, or what chiefly led to it, significant as it is for us 
of this era to ascertain. Sometimes men gi'ew jealous of 
woman's property rights, which under the operation of 
conditions here often made her holdings more than those 
of her husband. Some of the latter grew jealous of 
woman's great and growing influence over childhood and 
youth. Others deemed her moral censorship too exiguous 
and too severe. When, and before, the ''medicos" revolted 
they resented her efforts to assume some of their aban- 
doned functions. For her efforts to mitigate the woes 
caused by the defection of the representatives of law and 
order, of education, and of the priesthood, she incurred 
the disfavor of all these recalcitrant orders. 

But before, and beneath, all these causes a subtle degen- 
eration had begun within the sex itself. Slowly and with 
succeeding generations the high ideals of motherhood began 
to suffer impairment. The number of those who would not, 
or could not, bear children increased. As with us wars 
and great social or political convulsions that decimate 
the males are followed by an increased percentage of male 
births, while in long periods of peace females predominate, 
so in Atlantis during the many centuries of tranquillity 
that followed her mastery of the world as it then was, 
there came to be a marked and ever-increasing predomi- 
nance of women which even the advanced scientists of that 
day could not check at first, although, as we shall see, they 



no RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

learned to do so later, and with the exception above noted 
monogamy was too firmly established to be successfully 
challenged by any scheme of plurality of wives. Woman, 
thwarted in the attainment of her true goal as wife and 
mother, becomes restless, goes in quest of surrogate ends, 
and may come honestly to spurn in all her conscious 
processes the very thing that the depth of her soul, if she 
only knew it, cries out for. Thus more and more she came 
to seek other careers than that of motherhood. Some lapsed 
to flippant coquetry, seeking attention without intention. 
Some few sold themselves to sensual men. More sold their 
services, rivaling, and sometimes displacing men in the 
competition for positions, and while thus entering ever 
new fields as man's rival, demanding all the courtesies, 
deferences, and amenities accorded her in the ancient 
regime of the mothers. They demanded, and after a long 
struggle won, admission to the *' houses" and the "courts 
of honor," disparaged and flouted many of the activities 
taught and practiced in the hospitals, broke ruthlessly 
away from the old customs of dress and deportment, and 
strove long and earnestly everywhere to make their sex a 
sect. Many who wed, bore no, or at most one or two, chil- 
dren, who were more liable to bear through life the well- 
known physical and psychic stigmata of inferiority so 
common among only children. 

Longer and more bitter than the struggle between men 
and women was that between the fully and the half-sexed 
women, in which the latter had many advantages. The 
former, indeed, had nothing to gain and everything to lose. 
The latter demanded the right to use man's attire ; to enter 
even the army under their own officers; to be wardens of 
the street, magistrates, counsellors of state, heads of local 
government; to man ships, run public and all vehicles of 
transportation; loved the platform and processions; while 
some became engineers, priests, professors and statesmen, 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 111 

insisting that as the mothers had been the paramount sex 
under the old, so they, the new women, should be under 
the new dispensation. Laws they deemed unjust they os- 
tentatiously violated, and if taken into custody, drew about 
them the mantle of the injured dignity of their sex and 
insisted upon all the deference shown the mothers of old; 
while if the stem methods invoked for male offenders were 
resorted to, they took refuge in hysteria, voluntary starva- 
tion, or patheticism. Those who did not, or could not, have 
men of their own to serve them became even more mannish, 
in all their ways, works, and ideals, and often cursed the 
fates that had made them women. As time passed, some 
of the mothers themselves became infected with these ideals 
and laid aside their femininity to become feminists. The 
home was no longer the center of their interests, and they 
broke away into the open and sought a new thrill in the 
hustings, or before the footlights, or harangued in the 
streets, or led attacks by the ** direct method" upon indus- 
tries or man-made institutions which they disapproved, till 
insurance agencies were established against their wild and 
unpredictable depredations and sabotage. Everywhere, on 
the other hand, there were conservative counselors of pru- 
dence, moderation, and appeals to the old order. Many 
matrons broke with the traditions of centuries to make 
public reclamation against violence of conduct or extreme 
views, but only thus drew upon their heads more bitter 
objurgations. They were denounced as defenders of anti- 
quated customs and ideals and traitors to their sex, advo- 
cates of the old male tyranny, and were generally silenced 
because they could not, or would not, compete in stridency 
with the less scrupulous and more fanatical activities of 
the more radical innovators. They, it was said, were 
naive and unsuspecting victims of a long and deep-laid 
plot of subjection by man and were twice to be pitied, once 
for their simplicity in not realizing their subserviency, and 



112 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

again and yet more, for consenting to play the role assigned 
them after its real nature had been disclosed to them. 

To meet these new emergencies thus forced upon them the 
men were, if possible, less prepared and more impotent than 
were the mothers. They faltered, hesitated, tried alter- 
nately coercion and severity, persuaded, coaxed, threatened, 
made some cases examples of leniency and others of all 
the harshness of the law, for men now listened to the many 
and voluminous appeals, petitions and resolutions, and now 
turned a deaf ear to them, or strove to appeal to reason 
and prudence. But all was in vain, for the tide seemed fast 
growing too strong to be stemmed. They sought wisdom in 
counsel, but failed to find it, and womankind seemed fast 
drifting toward open revolt. It was as if she were striving 
to make her rule supreme in every walk of life. Often 
the defection extended to the home, and wife and daughter 
or both became, over night, as it were, new creatures, with 
a new nature and a new stock of opinions, arguments, and 
above all, new demands. Thus many households were dis- 
rupted, and many a union of married partners where quiet 
and happiness had reigned for years was broken up. Not 
a few men capitulated and fell into line, either from con- 
viction, expediency, or love of comfort and harmony, and 
proclaimed their readiness to concede all. Thus it came 
to pass that Atlantis slowly fell again under feminine do- 
minion, although in a new and very different sense from 
that of yore, for, whereas woman once dominated by * * sweet- 
ness and light,'* by inherent merit and virtue, now it was 
by coercion and vociferation. Once she attained all while 
claiming nothing ; she now demanded all and far more than 
she had ever sought before, and seemed in a fair way to 
attain everything. 

Woman had protested against all the great revolts above 
described, and when each great group of these institutions 
had ceased to function by its own act, she had come to feel 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 113 

deeply that there was something essentially mistaken in 
man's efforts to improve his estate. Thus the disasters of 
the times naturally deepened her distrust of his manage- 
ment of the world. Thus, too, when at first the structure 
of religion fell and its leaders withdrew, she felt, as woman 
never had so much cause to feel before, that all was lost 
unless she could find and lead a program of restoration. 
Perhaps if she had fallen back upon her own deeper in- 
stincts or harked back to the old order and striven to 
restore it instead of turning to external and more mechani- 
cal methods of restoration, there might still have been 
hope. But at the critical moment, when she was the for- 
lorn hope, she, too, following the all-dominating trend of 
events, had looked without and not within, and in making 
this fatal mistake man's last hope took flight from the 
world. Slowly as she won her victorious way to domi- 
nance throughout the land, all the easier because man him- 
self was so profoundly conscious of failure in the convul- 
sions and disasters which followed the downfall of each 
of the great culture institutions he created, woman, too, be- 
gan to lose confidence, even in the hour of her completest 
triumph. She, too, began to feel incompetent to cope with 
the forces of degeneration. She now had her will but 
found it both weak and without confident aim. Indeed, 
there was a moment when the mothers, had their insight 
been clearer and their resolve more resolute, might per- 
haps have saved the day. But even if so, it was now too 
late. Nor would it avail to appeal again to man, whom 
they had evicted from his true place. There could be no 
longer help from him, for he was too disheartened by the 
coUapse of his own handiwork to be of any aid. 

The gods were forgotten, gone, or probably dead; the 
vigor of the human race, sapped; even Mother Earth 
was less fertile, the land deforested, and mines exhausted; 
the enterprise of industry had vanished ; families were dy- 



114 EECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

ing of race suicide and the entire population was ravaged 
by manifold diseases; property and even land tenure was 
becoming ever less secure; and mutual suspicion, envy, 
jealousy, malice, and revenge often had free course and 
piety was deemed folly. The physique and even the aver- 
age stature of the people declined, while symmetry, grace, 
and beauty in man and women became more and more in- 
frequent. Some women had led in the foundation of rural 
communities on various agrarian, social, civic, domestic, and 
other novel plans, hoping by getting back again to Nature 
and making a fresh start thus to retrieve their moribund 
race or at least thus to find respite for themselves from 
a reality too grim and full of foreboding to be faced. But 
as the twilight of the race darkened, these sporadic com- 
munities served only as dim beacons, which gave little light, 
as the sun of Atlantis hastened in its setting, to guide man's 
faltering steps. 

Never had the sum of human misery been so great in 
the world. Happiness there was none, and feasting and 
gross pleasures were often fanatically grasped to sustain 
the soul amidst the wreckage. Love, even between man 
and woman, grew cold, and rancor and enmity often took 
their place as each held the other responsible for the woe- 
ful conditions. 

Then came the great revolt or emut of the women. It 
was not strange that many mothers, as the fortunes of the 
land sank so low, had individually refused to bear more 
children, since living had lost all that made it worth while. 
Taking their cue from the new women, who were not like 
the mothers who had sunk to despair and heart-sickness, 
but sought to feed fat their inveterate hate against man 
and to complete his subjection, they planned and organized 
secret sodalities of the wed and unwed, who took the solemn 
vow of both celibacy and chastity. When the Atlanteans 
learned later, as we have not learned, how to control sex 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 115 

before birth, some extremists urged that only girls or a 
greater preponderance of them consistent with race per- 
petuation be allowed ; but this proposal, which at fii^t met 
with some favor, proved abortive in the end. Others 
thought the very threat of such a step would bring men to 
terms with certain pet whims and hobbies of their own 
which they wished to impose on them, and were dismayed 
and even sought to cancel their vow when the men refused 
to capitulate. It was those who took these vows precipi- 
tately for ruse, bluff, or transient pique toward lovers or 
spouses, who gave most trouble to the leaders who were in 
grim earnest. Despite these and other obstacles, these so- 
dalities multiplied, and in the short space of a few years 
were found in each community and embraced most of the 
women in it. Thus it was that a strike of matrons like 
that fabled to have occurred in ancient Eome, which Zel- 
ler describes, and which soon brought the recalcitrant Sen- 
ate to accede to their demands, was organized throughout 
the land and grew more determined and implacable. Man 
sought both consciously and unconsciously to reenforce his 
refusal to yield by seeking to restore in his soul all the an- 
tique horror of homosexuality and even incest, which was 
more potent of old in Atlantis than ever in our era, as 
described by Ranke, and to direct it all against the half- 
sexed women. So effective, however, was this taboo woman 
had placed upon her sex that in a decade, we are told, the 
rate of increase of population declined nearly one thousand- 
fold, and most of the very few who were born were either 
illegitimate or condemned to wear the bar sinister, never 
so damning as in Atlantis, or else had sprung from parents 
who were social outcasts. Thus as the years passed, the 
population grew old and died. Cities were depopulated 
and the grass grew in streets once thronged, while build- 
ings and institutions decayed and wild animals lurked in 



116 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

the ruins, and the living could hardly inter the dead. The 
few children led lives of indescribable pathos, were pitied 
by all, and occasionally even slain by their parents as a 
solemn act of mercy. 

vin 

THE LAST SCENES AND DAYS OF ATLANTIS 

Meanwhile the whole island-continent had been slowly 
sinking. The sea had engulfed many a wide and once 
populous plain. Here water gradually filled the cellars and 
streets and the people took to Venetian ways of transport 
and evacuation. There it was possible in a smooth sea and 
on a clear day to catch a glimpse of inundated buildings 
beneath the waves. Elsewhere earthquakes had caused 
sudden submergence and tidal waves had swept away whole 
communities and left only ghastly ruins and debris; while 
Atlantis was becoming an archipelago of island^ once 
united. Wild beasts multiplied, and, like men, were con- 
centrated by the rising waters and made their lairs in 
what had once been the homes of men, and, having de- 
stroyed the flocks, they strove to subject feralized men to 
their old dominion. 

Here and there families or groups of them constructed 
or equipped vessels or arks in which they put all they held 
dear, and trusting their fortunes to the sea, trekked out 
into its boundless domain. Most of these venturers were 
wrecked; others were marooned or made a landing, after 
desperate and decimating hardships, upon the far colonial 
shores which we know as Yucatan, Peru, and Mexico, while 
some even reached China, Egypt, and Crete, or their 
descendants made mounds in America. But the race was 
moribund, and we of to-day can only trace with the great- 
est uncertainty a few faint vestiges of their presence even 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 117 

in these lands in our era which the overbold and perfervid 
imagination and ingenuity of Ignatius Donnelly has vainly 
sought to validate. The chief bequest all these widely scat- 
tered and transient colonies have left in our era is the tra- 
ditions of a great flood, which as Andree has shown, are 
found in every land accessible to Atlantis from Chaldea to 
Central America and are best found in those regions once 
most easily reached from Atlantis. 

On most of the far-flung northern coasts of Atlantis 
countless vast ice-floes and bergs were brought by the 
pelagic currents of a system of which the present configura- 
tion of land and sea has left no trace. With the increasing 
cold of this era these stranded bergs were reenforced by 
glaciers that crept downward from the northern mountain 
slopes, and also by the ice-packs that extended miles from 
the shore and the sheet-ice brought down from the rivers, 
and thus bays and gulfs were so filled that there can be 
little doubt that for centuries the tip of the Arctic ice-cap 
bridged the strait that had formerly separated Atlantis 
from Greenland. Certain it was that glaciation came to ex- 
tend much farther south than at any point where it has 
left its vestiges upon any of the continents as we know 
them. This secular advance of boreal climatic conditions 
not only brought many of the modifications and redistribu- 
tions of fauna and flora in these regions but involved many 
changes in human life. The inhabitable and tillable areas 
were restricted, and hence there were treks of hordes of 
rude and hardy Northmen into the more populous and ad- 
vanced south, somewhat as the desiccation of the trans- 
Caspian lands once drove waves of Huns and Vandals west 
into Europe. These Atlantean Norsemen, if they may be 
so called, were, however, only slightly less advanced in all 
the arts of civilization than were their fellow-countrymen 
of the south, and they brought a fresh and hardy strain 
of blood. Thus with them came invigoration, which for a 



118 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

long period retarded the processes of decline in the central 
regions, just as had happened eons before when Antarctic 
conditions had slowly advanced from the south. Human 
migrations by land had thus here been chiefly north and 
south and not mainly westward, with slight refluent eddies 
toward the east, as in our cycle, and these movements con- 
tributed greatly to the homogeneity of the aboriginally 
very diverse Atlantean people. 

Great mountain chains and ranges extended north and 
south throughout central Atlantis from the northern to the 
southern zone, some of which were, of old, snow-capped 
in midsummer under the equator. They represented the 
Plutonic activity which in the far back pretertiary time 
had first elevated this land above the primeval sea. Along 
these ranges there were many long-ago extinct volcanoes. 
During the period of the retreat of the above northern 
glaciation more and more of these ended their period of 
quiescence and broke out in fresh eruptions. Here and 
there, from this and that summit, belched forth fire, lava, 
and ash which had buried cities, as in our era Vesuvius 
overwhelmed Pompeii. Some of these cities the Atlanteans 
had excavated after millennia, while others still await, now 
far beneath the waves, the resurrection that will never 
come. During all this age the land was slowly sinking. 
Here and there dikes which had been constructed to re- 
sist the encroachments of the sea were broken down in 
some fierce storm, once fertile valleys were inundated and 
houses swept away, cities demolished, and thousands swept 
to death. Never since man appeared on the earth had Nep- 
tune and Pluto waged such terrific war. Atlantis included 
all those regions of the earth on which man had himself 
fully evolved, and here he wrought out his civilization, 
which culminated in the eocene dawn of the tertiary age. 
Here alone had men seen many of the animal forms long 
extinct for us which we therefore call prehistoric. Here 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS U9 

once the saurians and megatheria had most abounded, and 
here only had some of them lingered on till half, if not 
fully, human beings appeared, so that the oldest draconian 
myths have a vestigial kernel of actual human experience 
behind them. Here, though much earlier, porpoises, dolphins, 
walruses, seals, and whales, probably in this order, after a 
long interlude of terrestrial life, had reverted as back- 
sliders to their first love of the sea, and the closing scenes 
of this process were accelerated by the great submergencies 
that now seemed coming again. Thus, once more, we see 
that the primitive Atlanteans were closer to the great moral 
of the lives of the megatheria, which perished because of 
hyperindividuation or because they had to give all their 
time and energy to finding, consuming, and assimilating 
nutriment for their own gigantic bulks and could give no 
thought or care to their young or even to their eggs. All 
creatures that had aquatic stages in their phyletic evolu- 
tion tended to relapse toward it, and many forms that 
had lately left the amphibean stage reverted to it. 

When the water reached, and poured into, the deep pits 
above described that drew power from the central heat 
of the earth, there were explosions of often volcanic vio- 
lence, and the pits became new craters, while earthquakes 
rocked and tore open the earth, as also occurred when some 
of the volcanoes sank beneath the sea still spouting flames. 
Sometimes new islands rose from the sea over night, 
only gradually or suddenly to sink again. Water-fowl in- 
creased, and many species of land bird, one after another, 
as if sensing danger from afar and after a season of per- 
haps long perturbation, assembled in great flocks, and cir- 
cling high in the air and with plaintive cries took their de- 
parture over the waste of waters in quest of new and more 
settled conditions of life. This goal some may have reached, 
although it is probable that most were lost. At any rate, 
they were seen no more in Atlantis, once so rich in avian 



120 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

life. As these departures of the feathered tribes, of which 
Atlantis had been a veritable paradise, became more and 
more frequent and better understood, the ill omen they 
boded came to be more and more depressing to the inhab- 
itants. * ' What does this betoken for us ? " they said or far 
more often silently tkought. 

Wild animals that had been few multiplied, and most 
domesticated species that had not died of the plagues that 
fell upon them or been decimated by beasts of prey them- 
selves relapsed to their original feral state. Thus many 
dogs grew wolf -like and cats became large and fierce, while 
sheep and goats retired again to the mountains whence 
they had come, and flocks of horses, cattle, and pigs were 
seen on the plains where grain and maize once flourished or 
in the forests, which were steadily encroaching upon the 
crop areas; while many men reverted to the pristine stage 
of the hunter and fisherman. Sometimes packs of wolves 
attacked and almost depopulated outlying villages, and 
great felidas and troops of mammoths boldly invaded even 
the outskirts of cities. 

Most dreaded of all were the troops of great manlike 
apes, more sagacious and more formidable than any of the 
four higher species we know, and which were the direct 
progenitors of men. Their special quest was not adult 
men but women, children, and even infants, whom they 
carried off and reared and who often lost the power of 
speech and sometimes became leaders of ape tribes, com- 
pensating for their inferiority in strength and agility in 
tree-tops by their superior cunning. Some of these stolen 
female humans even became fertile with the apes, and the 
crossed offspring of these unions were particularly dreaded, 
for they seemed chiefly bent on carrying maidens into the 
jungle, from which they rarely emerged again. Some of 
these female anthropoids became vampire-like seducers of 
men. The unspeakable orgies in which these creatures led 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 121 

them left only very suppressed and distorted vestiges in 
our tales of sirens, bacchantes, Walpurgis Night revels, 
tales of Venusberg, Buddhist rites and superstitions, and 
the legends of the sons of gods mating with the daughters 
of men. The foul females of this new race found their 
way by night into the haunts of men to lure them to their 
embrace, and as the Atlantean females of the later era grew 
more mannish and unattractive, this quest was sometimes 
successful. Some members of this novel breed could hardly 
be distinguished from human beings save only by the fact 
that they had a usually very carefully concealed caudal 
appendage which was the chief mark of their pithecoid 
strain. Thus it came to pass that the last great and con- 
certed struggle in which all the Atlanteans were united 
was against these semi-simians. A crusade had long been 
directed against them, especially by the Atlantean women 
of both the new and the old types. The war began in a 
city of the south where the pithecoid aggressions had been 
peculiarly bold and cruel. The archon of this city, which 
was named Sikas, summoned all to array themselves either 
on the side of the humans or the sub-humans, and he was 
amazed to see the strength marshaled on the side of the 
enemy, which was also well organized and well led. It was 
a war of extermination in which no quarter was given or 
asked. Besides the two armies on the plain, men and 
women, and even children, fought in nearly every street 
and alley. All day the battle raged, but at its close the 
simians and their human allies were completely routed and 
mercilessly slaughtered, and their survivors fled like skulk- 
ing fugitives. Other cities followed until the warfare 
spread to every hamlet, and fortunately eveiywhere the 
Atlanteans were victorious, for nowhere was the foe so 
strongely entrenched as in Sikas. So intense was the fury 
with which this war was waged that for years every simian 
or quarter-simian found in the land was summarily slain. 



122 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

In some waste areas where the submergence was rapid, 
men and animals were often crowded together on hilltops, 
and there were sanguinary conflicts of claws and fangs 
versus knives and fists, there were desperate struggles for 
the summit of rocks as well as trees and housetops, while all 
things that could float were fought for ; but most of those 
who won them and drifted off sank later with bubbling 
groan or were devoured by the huge sharks, which we call 
antediluvian, that now swarmed in all the Atlantean wa- 
ters. Here geysers spouted hot water that filled the air 
with steam, killing every green thing, there buildings sank 
slowly or rapidly as in quicksands, subterranean waters 
oozed through the softened earth beneath them, and there 
were earthquakes that wrought their devastations and 
brought their characteristic panics. 

It was strange to see men and women who had long for- 
gotten the old gods now pray to all of them, while here 
and there peasants sacrificed not only of their flocks but 
their first-born children on crumbling altars. Of old those 
who believed in the deities thought them above and when 
they implored them it was with upward faces and arms 
raised supine, and moreover they were deemed good. Now 
all the deities invoked were thought to dwell in the nether 
regions, below the surface of the earth or sea, and were 
deemed malign. All worship now was solely inspired by 
fear and its motive was propitiation to avert or find a 
vicariate for divine wrath. As the tides rose, all forms of 
burial rites ceased and corpses were consigned to the waves 
as soon as life was extinct. 

As the awful drama drew toward its close, there were 
left only a few mountain tops and highlands near and afar 
as islands in the waste of waves. On these were gathered 
all the men and beasts that had survived. Some of these 
elevations suddenly belched fire and swept away every liv- 
ing thing upon them. On others, starving men and beasts 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 123 

fought and devoured one another or died of hunger and 
thirst. 

At length all the higher peaks sank and only the lofty 
plateau with its vast solid truncated rock was left whereon 
stood the temple of Neptune, the palace, the cathedral, the 
statues, and many other marvelous structures, the greatest 
architectural achievements of man upon this planet. These 
alone were built with every time-defying device that the 
master minds of Atlantis in her prime could bring to bear 
upon their work, and if the most destructive agencies that 
Nature can command had not been turned against them, 
they would to-day have been the marvels of our world. 
Within the sacred walls that enclosed all this magnificence 
were gathered only members of the scribal caste and the 
wise men they had selected, excluding all the hordes of 
those they deemed unfit that long clamored from without 
and who were fijially swept away by the rising flood, which 
for a few final years made all that was left in Atlantis 
seem like a wonderful architectural apparition at the bot- 
tom of a shallow sea, from which it was protected on all 
sides by a cofferdam. Here these few scores of men, fore- 
thoughtfully provisioned as if for a long siege, lived for 
months, the sole survivors of their race. Here they grad- 
ually died as the waters very slowly rose toward the sum- 
mit of the sea-wall that engirt them. 

And now we must describe what is recorded as if in a 
new hand in the microscopic script of the last pages of 
the great record book, which it was the chief business of 
these hamics, scribes, or archivists to write and preserve. 
Hamic was one of the chief founders of the Atlantean em- 
pire. Of unknown, but almost certainly of very humble, 
origin he rose by virtue and sheer ability to supreme 
power, led armies east and west, north and south, com- 
pleted the conquest of the world, and with able coadjutors 
organized and gave laws to mankind and was given almost 



124 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

divine honors. But at the age of sixty he retired from all 
public cares to devote himself to study and meditation. 
The great and sole achievement of his later life thus was 
to conceive and found a universal library that should con- 
tain every manuscript, book, written or printed matter, 
which a body of advisers, two in each department of knowl- 
edge, should pronounce worthy of preservation and whosa 
duty it also was to grade the merit of everything admitted. 
Thus every admission of a production to the probationary 
lists, which were kept open for five, fifteen, and thirty 
years, when it was given its final place, was a most coveted 
honor. Despite this rigorous, yet liberal. Censorship, as 
the centuries and millennia passed the collection grew in 
size to millions of final entries. All this material was sys- 
tematically arranged and kept by a corps of clerks in a 
huge rock-hewn series of crypts and vaults within, and 
beneath, the vast pyramid above described. Of all this the 
descendants of Hamic were long the sole custodians, but 
later they elected others of the most eminent ability and 
learning as coadjutors in this function, which became one 
of the most honorable of all in the realm. The Atlanteans 
had always had a very strong historic sense, more highly 
developed than anything our era knows, perhaps because 
the country was older, and all regarded the recording and 
conservation of the archives as almost a sacred function 
to which those charged with it were bound with most 
solemn oaths to set down all and only the truth and to spare 
no pains in ascertaining it. From this college everything 
written for the public, printed, or published, was collected, 
and all the many outside establishments for reproduction 
and multiplication of copies and their promulgation were 
supervised. Even after these auxiliary institutions were all 
submerged, the old tradition of keeping the records true 
and full through every vicissitude and to the end was 
the all-dominating idea of every member of this caste, a 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 125 

spirit that had grown strong, with an increased sense of 
responsibility, since the disastrous period of history began. 
It was they who had gone on missions far and wide, re- 
gardless of danger, and from which many had never re- 
turned, in order to note at first-hand all the items of all 
the above calamities that befell the land. Everywhere pos- 
sible they had observed, photographed, transcribed, com- 
piled, and digested testimony, and collaborated with each 
other before they set down their attest on the flexible gold 
leaves in which they were to be transmitted to posterity. 
For decades there had been no women in this sacred en- 
closure, and now in all that was left of Atlantis there was, 
so far as this doomed and isolated scribal colony knew, 
no one left in the world but them. Death was rapidly re- 
ducing their own numbers and only some two-score of the 
old archivists were left. Thus at length, upon a day set 
beforehand, they met, fasting and in formal and solemn 
conclave for final conference. "We," they said, "are the 
last and with us the race of man becomes extinct. How 
vain and futile is our piety to record that which no eye 
will ever see. If our country is the victim of its own folly, 
it is we who have been the greatest fools in our fanatical 
piety for records. Let us open all the now sealed alcoves 
and stocks of our library to the sea in token to each other 
that we died disillusioned and that all our work may perish 
with us. Let us eat, drink, and feast once more and then 
greet Death with a cheer and a final curse on Life, the arch 
betrayer, which it will now be a rapture to escape." 

This latter counsel prevailed, and so they banqueted in 
great Neptune's temple and pledged each other in wine. 
They taunted the waters, invoked the flood to come soon, 
toasted those they had known who had already met the 
Great Deliverer, drank again to imprecations of justice, 
health, long life, learning, piety, women, in drunken rev- 
elry, consigning all their own work and that of their pred- 



126 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

ecessors formally to Neptune, their bodies to his finny 
tribe, and their souls to the infinite void out of which the 
worlds and aU of them had come. 

But there was one young man among these holy sages, 
Zotes by name. He had but lately come, but we are not 
told how or why, from a far-off colony east of Egypt, and 
by his skill and learning had been adopted as a probationer 
by the sacred scribal college. His courageous heart sank 
within him as he listened in silence, els became his rank 
among them, to these carousals and resolutions of despair. 
In his childhood he had heard tales of far-off Lemuria 
which abounded in anthropoids that had not left apehood 
but had shown signs of slow approximation to the estate 
of primitive man. Perhaps, he thought, this eastern island 
continent was not all submerged and the deluge not uni- 
versal, and perhaps some time here another race of men 
might arise and — such is the irrepressible buoyancy of 
youthful fancy — ^they might, ages hence, learn of Atlantis 
and find in its story both encouragement and wholesome 
Warning for their own race. In such reveries Zotes found 
some consolation, and his very soul revolted at the senti- 
ments of the senescent elders who were ready to abandon 
all they and their forbears for more than ten thousand 
generations had lived for (for this was the period of clear, 
continuous, and authentic history, while the beginnings 
had extended thousands of generations farther back) . 

So while they caroused, Zotes stole away, and all night 
transcribed on a new golden leaf all he had seen and heard 
of the great conference and the feast, how he came to write, 
and who he was and what he intended to do. Then, assum- 
ing that he completed what he intended and what the find- 
ings of our expedition show to have been done, he opened 
the highest and only unsealed horizontal door into the high- 
est vault of the vast halls of books, inserted his final leaf, 
replaced the heavy metallic lid, and concealed it with the 



THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 127 

cement left after closing all the other openings. Then we 
may suppose he sat down and calmly awaited the inevitable 
end when the waters broke down the enclosure and en- 
gulfed him and the revelers in a common doom. 

We have waited long, oh, Zotes! but not in vain. Now 
that we, who have sprung from the very half -human apes 
of Lemuria, whom you dreamed of, have found you out, 
your name and your deed, the only link between the great- 
est era of the world and our own stands forth unique in 
all the world. If, as you fondly hope in death, we can 
profit by the lessons and warnings that have now come up 
to us from the depths of the sea, we owe it all to you. Per- 
haps you yourself, without knowing it, were the very first 
human product of Lemuria and our forerunner. Would 
that we might thus claim you as of our era, as well as also 
the youngest and last of the Atlanteans opening to us a 
world cycle of a length compared to which ours is but a 
few short years of which we should have known nothing 
but for you, and which, when we have fully exposed it, 
promises to be the most precious possession of all our 
culture. 



n 

HOW JOHNNIE'S VISION CAME TRUE* 

It was Sunday in early June and Johnnie Smith was 
fourteen that day. He was as commonplace to look at 
as his name was. He was a farmer's son and had worked 
at planting all the week on his father's farm, a mile from 
the village. He had dutifully ridden to church in the 
family carry-all, having harnessed and hitched up the 
horses himself for his father to drive, and had no less duti- 
fully attended Sunday School with his brothei^ and sisters 
afterwards, and then had partaken of the late but bounti- 
ful Sunday dinner always served at two P. M. As there 
was no supper Sundays, for this was in New England two 
generations ago, and as it was his brother's turn to help 
the hired man milk the cows and do the other chores at 
night, Johnnie faced a whole afternoon of leisure, and the 
problem of how to spend it weighed somewhat upon his 
mind. 

He was a sturdy, old-fashioned boy, already very useful 
on his father's large farm, for he could milk cows, fodder 
sheep, pigs, calves and horses, could drive ox teams, chop 
wood, make maple sugar, harvest, could break young steers, 
and, in fact, could do almost everything that a man could 
do except hold a plow, and train fractious colts to the har- 
ness. The last two winters, when his father had been 
away in the legislature, with the help of a neighbor's husky 
son he and his brother had borne the entire responsibility 
of the barns and stables and had also attended schooL 

* Partly suggested by J. Sadger's Veher Nachtwandeln und Mond- 
sucht (Leinzig, 1914) and Otto Rank's Der Boppelgdnger (Imago, 
1914) 

128 



HOW JOHNNIE'S VISION CAME TRUE 129 

But how dull and unsatisfactory farm life was to him! 
How he loathed the monotony and drudgery of it all ! He 
was at the age when nature begins to whisper the wisdom 
of all the ages into the alert ears of youth, and Johnnie had 
ears to hear and, what was more, he pondered the message 
in his heart. 

His mother had been a teacher and had always read to 
the father and the boys noons and evenings and always 
had attractive books borrowed from the little town library, 
and she alone subtly felt and unconsciously, if not con- 
sciously, was in rapport with Johnnie's ferment, for Na- 
ture had given her some insight into the needs of pubescent 
years and she had grown up with younger brothers. 

Mother and son had lately had a memorable heart-to- 
heart talk in which Johnnie expressed his yearning to get 
away from the farm and make more of himself than his 
father and uncles had made, and the mother had even sug- 
gested college as a possible, though a far-away, goal. John- 
nie, moreover, although he breathed no word of this and 
would have been mortified beyond expression if he suspected 
his mother divined it, was profoundly conscious of every- 
thing that Ann, a neighbor's eighteen-year-old daughter, 
said and did. How much of his life centered in thoughts 
of her ! But neither she nor Jennie, his flame of the year 
before, ever suspected the state of his heart. He had 
known their respective brothers, two older college boys 
from his own town, and noted how all the girls ''fell for 
them." Thus the germs of both ambition and of love were 
just sprouting from the richest possible soil ; or, to change 
the metaphor, a double infection fairly seethed and fer- 
mented in his soul. 

His father had also attended school and doubtless had 
had his youthful calentures. But they all seemed to have 
burned out, the paternal aspirations now tending toward 
material prosperity. The father wanted his eons to work 



130 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

hard as he was content to do, and he would put more money 
in the hank and till new acres, and when his sons were of 
age have them settled if possible on adjacent farms to con- 
tinue on the basis of his success, or at worst reconcile 
himself to their going West, where he had already wan- 
dered as a young man and stayed long enough to estab- 
lish his claim to severgil well-chosen government reserva- 
tion lots. 

But nothing of this kind appealed to Johnnie, who was 
already nourishing a youth's sublime of a very dijfferent 
kind. * * I have meat to eat that you know not of, ' ' was a 
phrase in the morning's sermon which stuck fast in John- 
nie's mind and he thought he knew what it meant better 
than the minister. 

Just now Johnnie's problem was what to do with his 
long summer afternoon. Some two miles to the east on 
another farm was a high hill, called in local parlance Mt. 
Hatch. It was densely wooded on all sides, but had a sin- 
gularly bald, rocky top rising perhaps two hundred feet 
above the highest trees. It could be reached only through 
a deep valley, also densely wooded, and by a long sharp 
climb, and it was towards Hatch top Johnnie found his 
somewhat aimless steps directed with an impulse of re- 
search characteristic of his age and of springtide. 

He had set out with no very definite purpose or goal, but 
had long been curious to visit this hilltop so plainly visible 
from a much lower hill just back of his home. He told no one 
where he might go, but stole back, after he had started, to 
take along a second-hand shotgun for which he had lately 
paid three doUairs and which was just then the most 
precious of all his possessions. As he wandered away 
rather aimlessly eastward over the pastures, he wondered 
if he really should go as far as Hatch top, but after a 
couple of hours of alternate sauntering, resting and steep 
climbing, in which he had encountered no bulls or rams, 



HOW JOHNNIE'S VISION CAME TRUE 131 

of wMch his experience had given him more tangible reason 
to be afraid than the ancient knights ever had to fear the 
dragons they are fabled to have slain, and which had made 
many of his plans for excursions somewhat tentative, he 
reached at length the summit of the hill. 

Here he sat down on the very highest rock, which was 
a deeply creviced ledge, and gazed about him. The view 
was far more extensive and commanding than he expected, 
more so, in fact, by far than anything he had ever seen 
or dreamed of. Eastward a long row of lesser hills 
stretched away as far as he could see, and in this direction, 
too, lay the great forest in which he had heard there were 
Btill catamounts, lynxes, wolves, and even bears. The 
Orient is the region of origins and traditions. To the 
south he looked down upon a village which he knew well, 
which was stretched out along a stream bed in the valley. 
Beyond it lay soft fields in a misty light symbolic of the 
humanities. To the west lay his own home just hidden 
from view itself, but with many familiar landmarks near- 
by, and beyond was the Great West, which his father had 
explored, a symbol of hope and of the future; while 
stretching around from northwest to southeast, or from 
Graylock to Monadnock, ran an irregular row of hills 
serrated on the far horizon a background of the infinite 
ocean of sky, from which quarter comes the pure cold light 
of reason. All the world he knew and far more now lay 
stretched out in clear and beautiful perspective below, and 
of course he could at best only feel these fourfold symbol- 
isms far below the ranges of his consciousness. Gradually 
as he sat and stood and turned, his interest in identifying 
points he knew merged into a vague unique sense of exalta- 
tion. How big the world was and how splendid, and how 
fine to look far down upon so much of it in a single sweep- 
ing glance ! 

In vain Johnnie 's sager elders are now asking with great 



132 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

earnestness why this excelsior motive, this altitude tropism, 
that Johnnie had followed as blindly as a climbing chamois 
or a soaring eagle. What induces mountaineers to scale 
ever higher peaks? Whence the passion of the aviator to 
beat the record and look down upon the world from an 
ever greater altitude? Why have mountains played such 
a role in history and myth where so many great men of 
\^ the earth have communed with gods or fought their own 
way clear through their doubts or solved their problems? 
Both deities and muses live among the mountains where the 
heavens and earth touch and inspiration comes literally 
from breathing here the same celestial ether with divine 
beings. 

Johnnie on his little colline must have felt something of 
this, for as he looked back on his short life he felt that he 
had hitherto been half asleep, that he ought to wake up 
from his dream and look reality in the face. The future 
could not, and should not, be for him as the past had been. 
If that was so, in a few years he would be married and 
settled for a long life of a routine so dull that there would 
be nothing further to be noted of him save the date of 
his death. No, things as they were were intolerable and 
should never remain henceforth as they had been. He 
would do, be, have something more, something worth while. 
He almost loathed his present life. He must molt it all. 
He must have a career. His father seemed to him never 
so sordid and unambitious as at this moment. Possibly he 
was not his real father, but this was a horrible thought in 
its implications when he thought of his mother. Perhaps 
he was an adopted child of a better breed taken over for 
some reason by his supposed parents. 

Boys of this age often have experiences akin to ecstasy 
that come like a kind of spontaneous second breath, per- 
haps as a psychic vicariate for, or sublimation of, phenom- 



HOW JOHNNIE'S VISION CAME TRUE 133 

ena usually more physical. Perhaps the very act of climb- 
ing predisposes to such exalted mental states. 

The sun was near its setting and Johnnie tried for a 
moment to look it straight in the face, shouting to it to 
witness his vow. He ran with arms outstretched toward 
it, exclaiming, '*0h, sun, help me." "I will, I will." 
*'0h, life, what is life? Give all of it to me, make me live 
long." "Shine into and through me. I want to know 
aU the world as you do. You never saw a shadow. You 
could not. And all I know is shadow darkening down 
into black ignorance. Don't set, but rise in my soul." 

Johnnie knew he was alone with Nature as he had never 
been before, and he capered about, laughed aloud, and sang 
in his triumph, and dedicated himself to the sun as the 
loftiest, biggest, most dynamic thing he knew. He wanted 
to rise on the world as a conqueror like the morning sun, 
disperse mists and cloud-demons, and he longed in the end 
to set gloriously, for the first real death thought had come, 
as it always does, after pubic erethism. Then as the 
frenzy went and left him, he lay on his back and gazed 
up at the zenith, then lay on his stomach and tried to 
project his very soul downward to the depths of the center 
of the earth and at last he almost slept for a time, perhaps 
in reaction, but it was not a dead sleep, but full of visions. 

Then the full moon rose in all its splendor, and Johnnie 
found himself, without knowing how, on his knees mut- 
tering to it. As he gazed at its markings, he thought he 
saw in them his mother sitting there and looking down be- 
nignly at him, till a lump came in his throat. What was 
the matter with him? Was he going crazy? "Oh, moon, 
how pure and beautiful you are! How far and yet how 
near ! How you draw my very soul up and out ! Why can- 
not I go to you? Take me up to you now, now. I am 
homesick for you. Be you my mother, and the sun my 
father." He felt that the moon had a messaore for him. 



134 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

What, oh what, was it? The very stiUness meant that the 
world, as well as his own soul, was listening for it. Long 
the queen of the night had waited to impart her secret, and 
now perhaps he was the one of all mankind who would 
hear it. ** Peace, my son, be strong, be calm.'* These 
words arose in his heart. Was it that, or was it, ** Arise 
and shine as I do,'* which he also almost seemed to hear? 
At any rate there was some new inner rapport established 
between them so that henceforth the moon would mean 
something more to him. He was in a sense adopted, ini- 
tiated, or had he heard oracles, hitherto unsuspected, out 
of the depths of his own psyche? Gradually the ecstasy 
abated and a great peace supervened. The outer world 
of reality faded and the night-time constellations began to 
appear, and at length he really feU asleep. Then came 
the dream-vision, as by inevitable psychic laws it needs 
must, for after the storm and stress of this intense per- 
sonal experience the tides of Mansoul turn and often 
ebb and in symbols the vaster life of the race finds expres- 
sion, as the stars come out when the sun and moon set. 

Johnnie's vision was of a woman, mature and of the 
mingled charm of mother, sister, and bride. She seemed 
to hover in the air just above him and very near where he 
lay. Every lineament of her face was apparent and won- 
derfully distinct and vivid. He felt that she was wise in 
life and had known its chief joys and sorrows, its high 
lights and shadows; that without the lore of pedants or 
books she understood the world and, best of all, under- 
stood him. She resembled no one he liad ever seen be- 
fore, unless it was a rude woodcut of the Holy Mother 
that he saw in a Catholic church he had visited months 
ago in a little village. But he unconsciously knelt before 
it as he had seen people do there. He had a feeling, too, 
that she had come down from the moon to bear to him its 
message but she did not speak, but only gazed at him out 



HOW JOHNNIE'S VISION CAME TRUE 135 

of the depths of her luminous eyea which spoke unutter- 
able love and yearning, and also revealed trusting con- 
fidence. Slowly, very slowly, she moved toward him, ex- 
tending her arms, while he rose to his feet and cast him- 
self into her embrace, where he was pressed close to her 
heart till soon his lips met hers in a moment of such ecstasy 
as he had never dreamed of before. *'You must never 
leave me," he whispered at last, and her soft, sweet voice 
replied, ** Never. You shall obtain all you seek. I shall 
be always with you, but you will not see me. Never seek 
me here. Be true, pure; cherish, and you will attain the 
ideals born in your heart here to-day, and then sometime, 
somewhere, when the hour is ripe, I wiU come to you." 

He awoke. The moon was riding high. Breezes were 
blowing. Where was she, and who? Nothing suggesting 
her presence was anywhere to be seen. But with his eyes 
closed he could see her and still seemed to feel her warm 
embrace. He had heard his father, who in his adventurous 
youth had known red men, tell how their boys just about 
to enter manhood fasted and were secluded until they had 
apparitions of some totemic animal or communed with the 
Great Spirit, or found their tutelary genius, but he had 
never heard of the Garu that the Hindoo youth meet, 
nor of the doubles of many kinds, sometimes in the form 
of their own good genii, which appear to men as per- 
sonifications of their own highest unconscious aspirations. 
But Johnnie wondered with all his heart what had really 
befallen him. It was a balmy June night, and he yearned 
unutterably for the wonderful figure whose image was so 
indelibly impressed upon his heart. He knew she would 
not return there, but she had promised to meet him some- 
time, somewhere, again face to face, and he felt a sense 
of her presence, unseen though she must remain, and this 
he knew could never leave him. He felt, too, that his 
own inarticulate ambition to be, and do, something signifi- 



136 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

cant for the world was to be gratified. He would be pure, 
strong, and great if he could, and above all he would be 
true to the mysterious lady of his vision. 

It was a long, hard, and somewhat fearsome walk home, 
where he arrived near midnight, climbing up the terrace 
to the shed and L-roof, and thence into his bedroom win- 
dow unobserved. His gun had been forgotten, but was 
probably safe in the cleft of the ledge on the hilltop to 
which it had slid. But there it must remain, much as he 
might want it, for never again would he visit Hatch-top 
till he held realized at least some of the lofty aspirations 
that had been born there. He would look at it whenever 
he needed strength or courage, but to visit it again unless, 
or until, he could bring some assurance of achievement, 
would be profanation. He and his bald-topped hill held 
a sacred secret between them that none must ever share. 
So he took up his round of home duties as before, intent 
chiefly that none should suspect the great crisis through 
which he had passed, a conversion by which the boy had 
become overnight a man. 

Now he knew he had a mission in the world, but what 
was it? Everything about it had been so vague, in terms 
only of emotion and desire. It was surely not to be the 
great hunter and frontiersman of his gun day-dreams. The 
lost gun told him that. Perhaps it was music. He had 
fiddled for dances and played the accordion, and envied 
the organist at the church, a girl not many years older 
than he. So, at the intercession of his mother, an old piano 
had been bought and Johnnie took lessons, only to learn 
after a year of hard work that he lacked gifts in this field. 
Perhaps he might write novels. To this he turned at fif- 
teen, covering many pages of foolscap on both sides with 
wild and lurid adventures, dealing with horrible incidents 
and burning, deathless romance, always written in red ink, 
with the inspiration of Sylvanus Cobb and Maria Edge- 



HOW JOHNNIE'S VISION CAME TRUE 137 

"wortli strong upon him. More secretly yet lie tried poetry^ 
but this Muse proved too coy for him, and even Johnnie's 
girl cousin, about his own age, who had been allowed to 
read his romances and pronounced them splendid, was 
never allowed to see this. Oratory thrilled him, and he 
spouted eloquence in the form of declamations and even 
wrote orations imagined for great occasions when the fate 
of nations was at stake. But here again was no thorough- 
fare. Slowly he realized that fame could not be attained 
by any short cut. His cousin, a dashing and brilliant fel- 
low, five years his senior, whom he greatly admired, had 
entered college, and the glamour of his example fired him, 
Johnnie stood well in school, and so now in the autumn af- 
ter he was fifteen he took hold of his Latin with a new zest, 
began Greek, and the father, after much persuasion by 
Johnnie and his mother, in due time gave his consent, 
and two years later Johnnie became a freshman. 

But this story is not of Johnnie's career. Suffice it to 
say here that he worked hard and acquired high standing 
in literature, as well as excellent rank in general scholar- 
ship, was able with the help of a wealthy relative to study 
in Europe, entered a profession and by dint of hard, ab- 
sorbing effort achieved for himself a standing and had a 
career, and at length married and had children who grew 
up well, married and left him. So at the age of sixty-five 
he found himself a widower, alone in the world, but fairly 
prosperous, respected and indeed eminent in his field, 
known, too, as a writer of successful books, and honored 
by learned societies. He was hale and hearty, had no 
thought yet of retiring, but in his rather desolate life a 
sense of solitariness and a nameless sorrow grew upon him. 
He felt a new craving for a different career. His life had 
not after all been satisfactory, successful though it seemed 
to others. He wanted something, he knew not what. He 
had been a good and faithful husband, as well as father, 



138 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

but never a lady's man and never fond of society and its 
conventions. He was not rich, but might have retired com- 
fortably in his old age. But he was still absorbed in his 
work which he loved above all things. No one would ever 
have suspected him of romance, but now it came. And 
now this story really begins, and its end is also near. 

One day, when Mr. Smith had come home early from his 
office to get ready for a sudden business trip West, the 
card of a lady caller was brought him. He would have ex- 
cused himself, but with the card came a message that the 
call was urgent and would take but a moment and that 
the visitor had been there twice before. He surmised that 
she sought his subscription for a new church already be- 
gun nearby, and so in fact it proved. As he hastened to 
her he was calculating how much he ought to donate. The 
lady rose to meet him with her back toward the window, 
which he faced, and by the dim light he could not at first 
see her face clearly, but there was something in her voice, 
mien, and, most of all, in her calm, composed manner which 
impressed him strangely. Indeed he forgot about his trip 
for the moment, and when the topic of his visitor's errand 
was broached he asked many questions about the new edi- 
fice, for his curiosity was strangely stirred and he was 
loath to have his guest depart. When he could think of 
nothing more that was natural and essential for a prospec- 
tive donor to know, he wrote a generous sum against his 
name, and consented to head her paper in the street for 
which she was solicitor. As she moved toward the door 
and their positions were reversed so that the light now fell 
fully upon her face and his was in the shadow, what was 
his amazement to see standing before him in living flesh 
and blood the identical lady of his pubescent hilltop vision, 
which had never faded in any of its lineaments from his 
memory. He could scarcely believe his eyes and swiftly 
passed his hands over them to make sure that he was now 



HOW JOHNNIE'S VISION CAME TRUE 139 

awake and that it was not another hallucination, as he 
knew the boyhood phantom had been. He glanced at her 
card, which was still in his hand and which he had not even 
looked at in his haste before, but it bore a name not only 
new to him, but as unique as his own was commonplace. 

** Madam," he managed to say, *^we have met before." 

**That is impossible," she replied, *'I have lived all my 
life in the South and came to this city only a few months 
ago." 

**But, surely, once, many many years ago," he faltered, 
and stopped, realizing her youth and freshness. ''Perhaps 
your mother . . . May I ask if you resemble her?" 

*'No," she replied, wondering at his curiosity. ''She 
was dark and very slender, and died when I was a child." 

The interview was at an end and she withdrew, evidently 
embarrassed and flushing slightly under his eager gaze. 

The Honorable John Smith (for he had served a term in 
the lower House of Congress) was stirred as he had never 
been before in all his career. He reviewed again and over 
and over his boyish experience on the hilltop, of which he 
had never spoken to a living soul. He realized that he was 
facing a problem too deep for his psychology. He re- 
viewed every item of the interview, and longed to see the 
mysterious stranger again. Leisure time found him some- 
limes walking his own and nearby streets in the hope, if 
he would confess it, of catching a glimpse of her face by 
daylight, but no such good fortune awaited him. A year 
rolled by. The church was nearly finished. He watched 
its progress with interest, and finally offered to add an 
organ to his first gift, an offer which was gratefully ac- 
cepted in a gracious letter signed by the pastor and the 
trustees. When the church was dedicated he was present, 
to the surprise of his friends and neighbors, for he had 
rarely been inside a church for a quarter century. At the 
doorway, coming out he met her face to face. He took the 



140 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

extended hand as she thanked him in behalf of the commit- 
tee for his new and generous gift, and again they parted. 
He had not been mistaken. It was the very same face and 
:figTire of his vision. He must know more of her. She was 
young and he was old enough to be her father. She was 
in the prime of womanhood, while he was entering upon 
the seared and yellow leaf of age. But could it be that 
Love's rejuvenating processes were awakening within him 
again? He realized that absorption in his career had di- 
verted him from all such abandon to the tender passion 
of his early life as poets and novelists write about. But 
now he understood that they might be right. He could see 
that to his marital love he had given himself, as it were, 
with reservations. Or was it that his wife, with whom he 
thought himself happy, to whose memory he was devoted, 
had not touched the deepest things over which Eros pre- 
sides in the soul and that there were still belated possibili- 
ties of natural affection hitherto latent? Or was this all 
but the fantasy of approaching senescence that sometimes 
flashes up for a season as the torch of life just begins to 
grow dim ? Could he love again, and this time more heart- 
ily than before^ His career was made and he could retire 
at any time from all other occupations and give the first 
place in his life to the woman of his choice, as he had not 
been able to do before. But what would his friends, and 
above all what "would she, even if she were free, think? 
Would it not seem a foolish infatuation at his age? But, 
on the other hand, what a void she would fill in his deso- 
late and lonely household and above all in his heart. He 
was not a clubman and had, in fact, few intimate friends, 
although he had a vast circle of acquaintances and a still 
larger one who knew him by his writings and by his offi- 
cial position. But all this which had filled his heart be- 
fore seemed now utterly unsatisfactory, and he wondered 
if, after all, his life had not been more or less of a failure 



HOW JOHNNIE'S VISION CAME TRUE 141 

in that he had none or little of the greatest thing in the 
world. He understood in a general way the theory of 
counterparts in complexion, temperament, diathesis, and 
all these laws he fancied were applicable to this woman 
who seemed outwardly to fulfill all his ideals. Why might 
not the same doctrine be applied to age ? 

Such were some of the thoughts and feelings that came 
to claim more and more of his vacant hours. There was 
much trouble between his judgment and his desires. 
Surely, a man of his age and experience, thought to be 
sane by all who knew him, could be trusted to be reason- 
able. But, on the other hand, there was this growing and 
almost irresistible urge so unprecedented in his life, which j 
was sweeping him away from so many of his old moorings, 
and it would not be put by. Moreover, his life had been a 
long and hard struggle and he had had little time for, or 
inclination toward, the other sex. True, he preferred 
some members of it to others, and several enterprising 
damsels, a few even younger than she, had made alluring 
advances, some almost offensively and even flagrantly so. 
But all left him unmoved, though some of these self-con- 
stituted candidates for his favor had been beautiful, a few 
rich, and one a scholar, and another famous in letters. On 
the other hand, he had not even thought whether this new 
star that had come into his horizon had any, all, or none, of 
these qualifications. But he knew that he wanted her 
and only her. ! 

On her side, too, he thought, could she ever really love 
such a man as he, and that, too, for his own sake? He be-i 
lieved that in their advances the others had had chiefly in 
mind his position, for he had small opinion of his own per- 
sonal attractiveness. Indeed, he hardly knew whether he 
possessed any or not. He knew women could scheme and 
feign affection and occasionally one could even blackmail. 
Oh, if he were only young, poor and obscure, but how 



142 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

could he tell as lie was? Young women have often led old 
men a merry dance, have toyed with their affections, lured 
them to all sorts of extravagances, and in their hearts 
laughed at them, and at the worst had other, younger 
lovers. But he must know. He must devise subtle tests. 
Yet it seemed impossible that the lady of his vision could 
have anything in common with any of these. It was prof- 
anation to think of her as any kind of adventuress. If 
she was not good and true, nobody could be. 

Now he was often found at church, was seen at some of 
its social functions, and often he met Her. He observed and 
learned all he could about her as if incidentally. She was 
a widow, had led a somewhat sad and desolate life, had 
known less joy than sorrow, had made an impulsive and 
not altogether happy marriage, and there were even a few 
things that it pained him to learn about her. But she was 
at heart good, true, pure, with boundless possibilities of 
affection, had rare powers of native insight and sagacity, 
had learned exceptional wisdom in the hard school of life, 
and had emerged chastened, calm, serene, genuine, honest, 
loyal, with definite and high ideals of life, the rarest self- 
control, had always been unmindful of self and ungrudg- 
ingly devoted to her services for others, had a boundless 
wealth of mother-love for children, and the more he knew 
of her the more completely all his fears took flight and 
the surer he was that he could love and honor her and 
take pleasure in making her hitherto rather somber life a 
happy one if only the springs of her affection could be 
made to flow toward him. She was not one who could or 
would pretend, she was not loquacious, her words were few 
and from her heart. She was retiring, and one who seemed" 
to prefer to appear less and worse, rather than more and 
better, than she was. She had few friends, her desires were 
limited, her demands on life moderate, her interests nor- 
mal; her ambitions were not inordinate, her religion was 



HOW JOHNNIE'S VISION CAME TRUE 143 

chiefly that of service. None could ever call her selfish. 
Of vanity she knew nothing, but rather was prone to un- 
derestimate everything pertaining to her own personality. 
Her virtues were of the homely, old-fashioned type, sug- 
gestive of her simple Southern upbringing. That she was 
not incapable of romance was attested by her wide but 
desultory reading in this field and by a few short stories 
she had composed and printed anonymously in several of* 
the less prominent magazines. 

All this he learned, concluded, and pondered, for al- 
though his love for her grew, a man of his training and 
ability could not plunge madly and blindly into love. 
Meanwhile, their acquaintance had ripened into some de- 
gree of friendship, and he felt that although she had given 
him not the least token of any tender sentiment, she showed 
toward him a confidence and frankness out of which deeper 
feelings often grew. 

Save at their first meeting they had never been alone to- 
gether. But one stormy evening when an important parish 
committee meeting was called at the pastor's house only 
four were present, and in the midst of the session both the 
pastor and his wife were called by phone to the home of 
their daughter, who had met with an accident which at 
first seemed to be serious, in a distant part of the city. 
Thus He and She were left alone. **You can finish the de- 
tails by yourselves, ' ' said the pastor as he left them. 

His mind had already been made up, for he had long 
waited for just such an occasion, and made characteristic 
provision for every issue, and when the items of business 
were finished he began. 

*' Would you listen to a very personal story of my boy- 
hood which has never been told to any one before, but 
which my acquaintance with you has brought very vividly 
into my mind?" 

She showed none of the hesitation or embarrassment 



144 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

which, he had expected, and assented. Whereupon he nar- 
rated all the details of the hilltop much as it is ahove re- 
corded. She listened with an interest more absorbing than 
he had expected, and when he said in closing, ' * This woman 
was you in every detail of face, figure, and expression, and 
when our eyes met and the vision faded, her face had just 
the look of tenderness, charm, fascination, insight, that I 
seem to see in yours now. ' ' He paused. 

The moment of silence was broken only by the sound 
of rain on the trees outside. 

'^^ Listen," she said at length, **I am far less surprised 
at your tale than you think, and now I, too, will tell you 
what no one but myself ever heard and what I could never 
tell to any one else, not even to you, but for what you 
have just said. My girlhood, too, was romantic. I was 
reared on a Southern plantation where I was very much 
alone and found solace for my solitude in books, but very 
few of those about me seemed as real companions as those 
I read of. Gradually, too, I evolved a double and coun- 
terpart that eventually assumed a very distinct form, 
which embodied my idea of manhood. I even gave him 
a name and he was always with me on my rambles and 
rides. He was my imaginary companion for years and I 
judged all men I knew by him and found them inferior. 
He became the hero of my day-dreams and I fancied he 
would appear to me sometime, as he did several times but 
only in dreams by night. He was partly the idealized 
image of my dead father as my mother had described him. 
He was also my ideal of a husband, though older, wiser, 
better than I. Then I came North, married in haste, alas, 
only to repent at leisure, and when my husband was 
brought home in the dim light of early morning killed in 
a drunken brawl I was wicked enough to feel little sorrow 
but a deep gladness in my heart that 1 was free again, and 
vowed that I would henceforth live with, and for my ideal 



HOW JOHNNIE'S VISION CAME TRUE 145 

knight, no longer dreaming that he ever really lived.'* 
She paused. 

**And did he?*' he asked almost breathlessly. 

**Yes," she answered. **He is here/' she murmured, as 
she laid her hand lightly upon his arm. He clasped her to 
him in a long and warm embrace, and their lips met. 
When at last he released her, they gazed for a moment into 
each other's eyes. 

*'Have not our doubles been kept apart long enough? 
Do we not owe something to them?" he said. 

''I have thought so," she said, ''but ever since I saw 
you it has seemed to me as though they were married 
already. ' ' 

A latchkey was heard at the front door. The pastor and 
his wife had returned with their sick daughter and a physi- 
cian. But when the situation had been explained to the 
clergyman in a few brief words, he consented to perform 
his office then and there, and they went forth, as the moon 
broke through the clouds, man and wife. 

It remains only to be added that on their honeymoon 
they made a pilgrimage to old Hatch top and there they 
found imbedded under the growth of many years of ferns 
in the chasm of the rock the remains of the old gun, from 
which the stock had rotted entirely away. It was a sym- 
bol of the first stage of sublimation which had culminated 
in the unique union not only of this man and his wife but 
of senescence and adolescence. 

Those who are now saying that romance really ought to 
and that the new romance will not end but begin with 
marriage may be right. Now that women are coming into 
their own in the world just at a time when a new psychol- 
ogy of sex is being born, love chronicles will not end but 
begin at the church door, and the first few years of wed- 
lock and the readjustments it involves open a new domain 



146 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 
as yet explored only by a few pioneers. When tales of 
this kind are in vogue, and when the situation here de- 
scribed has further evolved, such a sequel may perhaps 
sometime be written. 



ni 

A CONVERSION 

**0, Lord, above all save our young men from the curse 
of rum. Break, God, the power of the saloon. Bless the 
great cause of temperance and all its leaders," etc. 

With such phrases and many more Samuel Cooley always 
concluded his petitions to the Almighty at the Wednes- 
day evening prayer meetings in Stringfield, which he 
always attended and in which he always took part. He 
was a fairly prosperous farmer whose large old house was 
just outside a large and growing New England village. 
Here his father and grandfather had lived, and when the 
former died the church promptly made Samuel deacon 
in his father's place. He was in the early forties, large, 
strong, ruddy, steady in his habits, a hard worker, a con- 
servative Democrat because this was the party of his sire 
and grandsire. He had graduated at a local high school, 
but had no disposition to seek the so-called higher educa- 
tion; nor had he traveled much. At twenty-one he had 
married a neighbor's daughter, Prue Ketcham, who had 
borne him two sons and two daughters, the oldest a boy 
now eighteen and the youngest, a girl, thirteen. 

Samuel Cooley prided himself upon being old-fashioned, 
and loved the good old ways. He was unfavorable to most 
labor-saving devices, whether on the farm or indoors. In 
vain his boys had urged him to put in a mowing or a reaping 
machine, an auto truck, a system of drainage pipes for the 
meadow, and enter upon a path of progress as his neigh- 
bors had done. But whenever he had yielded to these 

147 



148 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

** new-fangled movements'' it was slowly and with reluc- 
tance. During tHe winter he had one hired man, and in 
the summer usually three, hut when he engaged them he 
always stipulated that every one who worked for him must 
have signed a temperance pledge, and if any of them 
broke it or was heard of in the village saloon it meant 
t£at he must seek a job elsewhere. This strenuous and 
intolerant attitude had made help hard for him to get and 
harder to keep, and, in fact, if he but knew it, necessitated 
his paying a higher wage; but in such matters he was 
uncompromising. Those who knew his family and its his- 
tory ascribed his teetotalism and his general pharisaic op- 
position to so many of the joys of life, in part, at least, 
to the fact that both an uncle and a great-uncle had fallen 
victims to John Barleycorn and the one had become a town 
drunkard and the other a general reprobate. 

Samuel Cooley even kept up the good New England 
custom of family prayers after breakfast every morning, 
and this service the **help" both indoors and out were 
expected to attend, though in the haying time and when 
work was pressing the time devoted to it was somewhat 
curtailed to be made up on Sundays. He was not only a 
religious, but a severely moral man, built on a puritanical 
model such as can only be found now in New England and 
even here only very rarely and in rural communities. And 
he was proud to be so regarded by those who knew him. 
He was honest, lived plainly, economically, saved money 
and put it in the bank, hated tobacco as an abomination 
second only to alcohol, was a strict Sabbatarian, kept up 
the old traditional, puritanical prejudice against cards, 
dancing, indecorous slangy language, and everything that 
could be called frivolous. Evenings after the work was 
done he read his daily paper or his weekly Temperance 
Advocate, and perhaps listened to his daughters* simple 
rendering of their small repertoire of tunes on a melodion 



A CONVERSION 149 

which he had bought for theln, not without some hesitation 
and only at their mother's earnest solicitation. It was 
the practice of the household to retire when the nine 
o'clock curfew rang in one of the town churches. Thus 
the weeks, months and years glided placidly along and 
thus they seemed likely to go on until in the due course 
of time Cooley should be gathered to his fathers and his 
sons in their turn should take his place. 

But in the autumn of the year when Samuel Cooley 
was forty-five there was an exciting local political cam- 
paign. The lukewarm attitude on the temperance question 
of Squire Brewster, who had for many years represented 
the town in the state legislature, was severely criticized. 
Other political and local issues entered in and created an 
excitement unprecedented in the community, and in the end 
Samuel Cooley, after much genuine reluctance, consented 
to become an opposition candidate, and to the surprise 
of many and the consternation of the Squire and his over- 
confident followers Cooley was elected by a small majority. 

In due time, thus, he left the farm in care of the boys 
for the winter and found himself situated in a modest 
hotel in Boston, which city he had never ^dsited before. 
As a prohibition law-maker, commissioned by his constit- 
uents to make the State safe on the temperance ques- 
tion and with an ardent desire to do what in him lay for 
the great cause so near his heart, on finding a bar in the 
basement of his hotel he very promptly moved to another, 
poorer and less conveniently located though it was. The 
first weeks of the session were uneventful. Cooley made 
many acquaintances but none of them intimate, and began 
to feel that he understood the run of things a little, and 
although his voice had never been heard and was not 
likely to be heard on the floor of the House he did not 
hesitate to make his convictions known. Then the all- 



150 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

important prohibftion bill was introduced and its discus- 
sion was opened ably on both sides. 

This was the state of things when one day Cooley, as 
if by chance, met a fellow-member of the House whom he 
knew as Sturgis and who seemed to be a man of great 
influence and always the center of a group that appeared 
to look to him for leadership. He was a tall, large man 
of rather imposing physique and seemed much at home 
in his environment. 

* ' Cooley, won 't you come to lunch with me between ses- 
sions — that is, if you have no other engagements ? " he said 
to him. 

Cooley felt not a little pleased that this experienced 
and distinguished member knew his name and also that 
he subtly assumed that he might have other engagements 
when he had, in fact, nowhere found himself in demand 
but felt rather strange and alone in the city, and so he 
readily accepted. 

He was still more pleased when he found no other guests 
at the little table save a Mr. Howes, who was introduced 
as an outside friend. Sturgis ordered wisely and well, 
and with the viands was brought a generous pitcher of 
lemonade. 

After some general conversation Sturgis spoke incident- 
ally of the Mahew, or Prohibition Bill, remarking that the 
forces aligned pro and con were very evenly matched and, 
in fact, it seemed that perhaps a single vote would decide. 
*'I suppose your mind is made up, Cooley,^' he said. 

'*! shall vote for it," said Cooley, *'of course." 

*^So I supposed," said Sturgis. ''For me, too, there is 
only one side." 

"That is right," put in Howes, "but these liquor men 
are well-organized and have bushels of money. They 
would right now slip a sum in greenbacks up into four 
figures and no questions asked for a single vote." 



A CONVERSION 151 

**Yoii don't say so," said Sturgis, as if in surprise. 
**Such a roll would look good to me. Just how do they 
do it?'' 

**Why," said Howes, "you have simply to slip word to 
Houstein, the little Jew lawyer, that, whereas you were 
for the measure, the arguments for the other side had been 
so strong that you are now open-minded, and then you 
will receive a big greenback by mail as a kind of retaining 
fee for you to make further investigations for the benefit 
of the House, so you can go about and inquire further 
into the merits of both sides. You would, of course, hear 
all who come to you for and against the measure, and talk 
matters over with those you know who are for it, and if 
you are convinced and vote their way then the rest of the 
pile will reach you by the wireless route, and then there 
will be nothing to show that you had ever had a cent. It is 
a wonderful metliod and absolute secrecy is, of course, 
a matter of honor." 

**I confess I should like to know something more about 
this," said Sturgis. **How does it strike you, Cooley?" 

**Why," said the latter, *'I don't know much about 
these things but it looks to me like downright corruption 
and bribery. Is that the way they do things here?" 

**WeU," said Sturgis, thoughtfully, *'I am rather in- 
clined to think that you are right about it." 

**0f course he is right," put in Howes. "But that is 
the way the members of the opposition work." 

Meanwhile, the lunch was most appetizing to Cooley 
and the lemonade had a delightful and, to him, new flavor 
or tang about it, and the more he sipped and tasted the 
more he wanted. These two men were so sympathetic and 
congenial that he felt his old reserve gradually slipping 
away from him and he became talkative. He told his new- 
found friends something of his native town, his farm, and 
even his family, and how he came to be elected in place of 



152 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

Squire Brewster whom both the others knew and spoke of 
in high terms as a sagacious man but not always inclined 
to be decided enough when great moral issues were at 
stake, subtly implying in what they said a certain admira- 
tion for one who could win out over so doughty a com- 
petitor. 

It was now Cooley who led the conversation, and he grad- 
ually launched out on a theme which, thanks to the many 
home talks in public on the subject he had given and 
especially to the Advocate he had so diligently read, made 
him feel more or less at home. And he surprised and 
apparently entertained and delighted his two new friends 
by his portrayal of the evils of intemperance. He quoted 
statistics and told much of the sufferings of wives and 
children of habitual drunkards and of inebriation as a 
cause of crime, while the sympathies of his hearers, who 
glanced significantly at each other, seemed to increase. 

' ' He surely puts it strong and well, ' ' said Sturgis. * * The 
House ought to, and really must, hear these things." 

**And that would probably settle the fortunes of the 
bill,'' added Howes. 

''Do you really think so?" queried Cooley. 

''Surest thing on earth," replied Howes. "You are a 
bom advocate, Cooley. If you only repeat what you said 
here to us, and with the same fervor, it will settle the fate 
of the measure. Wet your lips with one more drink of 
this lemonade and we will return and shall be just in time 
for the afternoon session." 

Thus fortified within and without, Cooley, escorted by 
one friend at either arm, entered the Chamber just as 
the speaker's gavel fell, calling the session to order. The 
morning discussion of the Prohibition Bill was to be con- 
tinued. 

Before any one else could do so, Cooley rose and his 
voice rang out clearly and strongly, "Mr. Speaker!" He 



A CONVERSION 153 

was recognized, as he a little uncertainly rose in his place, 
steadying himself with a hand on either side of the ma- 
hogany desk before him. 

*'Mr. Speaker," he began, **I represent but a small part 
of this great State. I had not meant to speak but my 
good friends, Sturgis and Howes," pointing to each of 
them, **tell me that it is my duty, and I (hie) never 
shirk a duty. ' * 

The House was quick to divine the situation, and a 
hearty round of applause rang out with cries of ' ' Bravo ! ' ' 
and one keen member from the opposition shouted, ' * Three 
cheers for Sturgis and Howes." 

Cooley was flushed and pleased and his manner showed 
that, having so successfully broken the ice, he was resolved 
to push on and do his duty to the very uttermost. He drew 
a deep breath, grasped the desk more firmly, and pro- 
ceeded. 

**Yes, it is my duty," he shouted, *Ho raise my feeble 
voice against the infamous iniquity of King Alcohol who 
is so firmly enthroned in this State." 

Here came a new salvo of more prolonged applause which 
the Speaker could not suppress, but this time it was all by 
the opposition, while the supporters of the bill were silent. 

*'Itum," he cried, *'is the greatest curse in the world,'' 
banging his fist down on the desk with a resounding thump. 
** Think of all the poor wives and hungry, starving chil- 
dren " Here his voice broke and a tear from either 

eye coursed down his cheek as he thrust both hands into 
his pocket for his handkerchief. In regaining his poise he 
swayed over toward the right and then over toward the 
left. The room seemed to be whirling about him and, catch- 
ing at the next desk, he fell prone in the aisle. Such a 
scene had not been witnessed in the Capitol before in the 
memory of the oldest members. Amidst confusion and out- 
cry Cooley was picked up and borne, feebly struggling but 



154 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

loudly vociferating, from the hall and into a small ante- 
room, where he was deposited upon a couch and left to a 
comatose, soon to be a stertorous, sleep. 

Thus Sturgis, the boss of the liquor party in the legisla- 
ture, and Howes, the experienced lobbyist, killed the Pro- 
hibition Bill for that year. ''They got up a scream and 
strangled it," as one member tersely put it. 

Poor Cooley awoke hours later and made his way back 
alone to his hotel, slowly realizing what had befallen him. 
It was too disgusting and also humiliating for him or any 
one to face. Even the scavenger press stated that he had 
fallen suddenly ill in the midst of an impassioned speech, 
but all his colleagues knew that such things would eventu- 
ally spread even to Stringfield. He felt he could never 
go back to the House, or even face his home again. Thus 
he lingered, day after day, in the hotel, and wandered about 
the city most of all in the evenings. Once or twice he 
met a legislator who inquired, with a veneer of courtesy 
to veil the irony of it, how he had recovered from his 
shock. But he knew that they knew the awful fact that 
the pillar of virtue in his community had been drunk, very 
drunk, and had made a ghastly exhibition of himself and 
defeated the cause he loved and was commissioned to up- 
hold in the Capitol of his State. To explain would be to 
reveal himself as a ''rube" and a fool, as weU as a weak- 
ling. There seemed no way out. Rehabilitation was im- 
possible. Thus as the days passed he came to regard him- 
self almost as an outcast and heard within all the mad coun- 
sels of despair. 

From his intolerable reflections he instinctively grasped 
at every source of diversion. It was the mad instinct of 
self-preservation. He ventured into the theater, an insti- 
tution he had never seen before, and found it harmless and 
amazingly entertaining, so much so that he went again 
and again. Movie shows of all sorts helped him to forget 



A CONVERSION 155 

his distress. He strolled into the nine A. M. session of the 
police court, and learned much that was new and instruc- 
tive of the seamy side of life and how the other half lived. 
He fell in with a very engaging drummer at his hotel, 
who seemed drawn to him, and the attraction became mu- 
tual. This Cohen was full of interesting and racy remi- 
niscences which suggested certain temptations that Cooley 
had never felt before. One night they strolled into a bar- 
room and both took a glass of beer, and later he sipped 
rather freely from a cocktail that was brought while they 
were dining together. 

* ' One must learn, ' ' he told himself, * * to know the enemy 
if he meets him again, and also one must be convinced that 
he can indulge and remain temperate. To resist is better 
than to flee temptation. ' ' 

Another stranger and transient guest at his hostelry in- 
itiated him into bridge. And once he staked a dollar on a 
game of poker, won, and had the courage and the sense 
not to play again that night. He yielded to the fascina- 
tion of billiards enough to see that he might indulge more, 
if he wanted to, without scathe. He smoked a little, enough 
to know how it felt, and, to make our narrative complete, 
he even toyed with other temptations in ways that must 
here only be suggested and which cannot be described. He 
was intent only on knowing life as it really was, and he 
had a confidence, which proved fully justified, that he 
would not fail in his experiments. He had a kind of in- 
stinct to be led into temptation, rather than to be saved 
from it, as Jesus prayed. Perhaps the ideal that lay con- 
cealed at the bottom of his soul was not unlike that of Du- 
mas, who wanted to know everything, evil as well as good, 
in the world. Suffice it to say that all these little adventures 
together served to lift the curtain to a great world of 
which he had hitherto known nothing, and what was his 
surprise to find that he liked it passing well and he thought 



156 EECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

that he was not harmed but benefited by it. The kind of 
virtue he now longed for was a manly virtue that did not 
need the support of precepts that appealed to juveniles, 
and it was also of the normal kind which did not need as- 
ceticism or any extreme curative treatment. What he was 
really after was a true classical temperance that held a 
golden way between all extremes and regarded nothing 
human as foreign. Thus it was that Cooley went through a 
kind of moral molting. 

Then the long-delayed blow fell. He had not once re- 
visited his seat in the House since the awful incident that 
had proved so tragically undoing, but had intimated noth- 
ing of this in his letters home, although nearly three 
months had passed. One day he received a marked copy of 
the home paper, which intimated in a veiled, yet most sug- 
gestive manner what had really happened. ''What if a 
certain prominent citizen sent out on a mission to the Capi- 
tol had disgraced himself and wrecked the cause he was 
sent to serve by a public exhibition of intoxication, and if 
his seat in the assembly, where he was sent to look after 
the interests of those who elected him, had been vacant ever 
since that incident?'' etc., etc. It might have at first 
struck one as a libel, but he knew that in fact it was but 
a part of the whole shameful truth. He must act. But 
how? His wilder thoughts suggested that he mortgage his 
farm and start for parts unknown, beginning life anew 
and under another name. But he had done nothing really 
wrong, and flight would look too much like a confession of 
real guilt. He was no coward. It took him a long time to 
make up his mind, but when he did, he acted, as was his 
wont, with promptitude. He wrote to the chairman of his 
party committee at home, resigning his office as legislator, 
to take effect at once, *'for personal reasons." Shortly 
after he went home, he gathered his family together and 
told them frankly the whole story that centered in the 



A CONVERSION 157 

fateful and singularly tinctured lemonade. But if there 
were no reservations, there were also no details in this 
family confession about his life in the Capitol during the 
subsequent months. This little course he had given him- 
self in the great school of life was his own secret. In con- 
clusion he told his household that he had brought home 
from the legislature a newer and larger view of life, that, 
whereas he was asleep before, he was now awake, and that 
they would see a change and that he believed himself a 
new and better man, and that he had a truer and richer out- 
look upon the world, and that he was going to adopt a new 
religious creed, for he had heard considerable liberal and 
some radical views, not only from the pulpits during his 
peregrinations among them on Sundays, but from men of 
the world he had met. Thus he returned to his place and 
his home and his work upon the farm. 

But socially he was ostracized to a degree possible per- 
haps nowhere but in a conservative old town in New Eng- 
land. But it was his family that suffered most. The chil- 
dren were taunted because their ''drunkard" father had 
disgraced the whole town. And, most of all, his wedded 
partner of twenty years, pious, austere, more conserva- 
tive and untraveled even than her husband and long in 
feeble health, weakened, sickened and died under the shock 
and mortification of it all — "of heartbreak," the gossips 
said. 

As for his former activities in the church, in which most 
of the social life of the community had long centered, 
Cooley had sagacity enough to know that even if he had 
wanted to renew them, he would be no longer welcome. 
And so he absented himself from all religious services and 
resigned his office of deacon. But this did not satisfy the 
watchdogs of Zion, and when he ignored the summons of 
the church committee to appear before its members and 



158 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

explain and confess, lie was dropped from the roll of church 
members. 

Some of the most scientific students of human nature 
have lately told us that the middle forties are on the whole 
the very best years of a normal, modern man's life, that 
about then men incline to take stock of life and perhaps 
take new tacks, and that almost never afterward do great 
changes occur either for better or for worse. It was just 
this law that Cooley now, though all unconsciously, illus- 
trated. For a time he again thought of making the break 
with his past complete by selling his ancestral acres and 
home and going West and starting anew. But he knew 
that there, too, sooner or later, wherever he might settle his 
story would find him out. This course, moreover, did not 
square with his New England conscience, and to his dogged 
will it seemed too much like retreat, if not confession. The 
net result of his many musiQgs was that he decided, like 
Hester in The Scarlet Letter, to stay right where he was 
and to make the best and the most of the rest of his life. 
If his **fair* had really, as the church thought, cut off his 
hope for a better future beyond the grave, he would try to 
get all he possibly could out of the here and now. **One 
world at a time, gentlemen, and this one now," he had read 
somewhere, and liked the sentiment. 

Thus, off soon to the State Agricultural College went 
both his sons, where they were told to learn everything new 
and good that could possibly be applied to the old place. 
Soon, too, the girls were sent away to a school of domestic 
science and social service, with courses of physical train- 
ing, dancing, etc. He bought beer by the keg and served 
it out moderately every evening to such of his workmen as 
desired it. He bought a billiard table and had a large attic, 
hitherto unused, finished off and furnished as a kind of 
clubroom, where smoking was not disallowed. And now 
that the children were away and the wife dead and the 



A CONVERSION 159 

farm work increasing, he had to employ six men and two 
women to conduct the place properly. Under these cir- 
cumstances all were loyal and interested, and the attrac- 
tion of the saloon in town abated for his men. 

Sunday presented a serious problem. No work save the 
necessary chores was done and every one did as he pleased. 
On that day the carry-all was placed at the disposal of pic- 
nic parties, and some evenings a few of the neighbors 
came in for a social dance or a card game, to the great 
scandal of the orthodox and the pious. Young people were 
especially attracted, and despite the affirmations of the 
clergyman that in the Cooley place the Sabbath was being 
desecrated, they continued to frequent it, especially Sun- 
day evenings when those that were able furnished music. 

Thus things went on for two years. The boys had 
brought home many useful and practical ideas. The old 
mill-pond on their place was drained and its rich deposit 
of muck and loam used on the farm as fertilizer and sold. 
A gravel pit, long freely accessible to all, was commercial- 
ized and a small fee was charged per cart-load to all who used 
it. The Cooleys adopted the fashion of using it for con- 
crete, for which an outfit was bought, and this was loaned 
for a small fee when not needed for home work. "With its 
aid, a new bam with model stables was constructed, and 
then adjoining it a silo, and later a model pig- and hen- 
house were built. The soil of the various parts of the farm 
had been taken to the College and analyzed, and new crops 
were put in with fertilizer as suggested by the analysis. 
Improved machinery was bought and put to work. A 
water-gas plant was put in and its products used for cook- 
ing and lighting. The attention of a large company of 
manufacturers of agricultural instruments in a distant 
city was attracted and this concern, after due deliberation, 
adopted the policy of making the Cooley place a model to 
show the community what could be done; so their advice 



160 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

was now added to the suggestions the boys brought for the 
land and the girls for the house. Here the neighbors could 
see object-lessonwise what the very latest methods and 
appliances could do. Exhibitions were held and new in- 
struments, tools, and new methods of doing work were 
demonstrated. 

Cooley was now forty-seven. Just before his **fall,'' 
a new female principal had come to the old, and very 
slightly endowed, local academy, which was half pri- 
mary and half high school. She meanwhile was bring- 
ing, too, a new spirit to the town through the medium 
of the young people. She insisted that teaching the need- 
ful standard topics of the old curriculum should be sup- 
plemented in many ways, so that children should know all 
possible about their environment. Under her guidance and 
inspiration they collected, pressed and labeled grasses, 
ferns, and, in short, specimens of all the local flora. A 
kind of town museum was started in an unused upper room 
of the older of the two school buildings, where insects, both 
harmless and pestiferous, samples of local birds and their 
nests and eggs, and all the land fauna were gathered. The 
school botany and zoology were thus made practical. Greek 
was dropped, and Latin dwindled save for a few ;;vho defi- 
nitely planned careers in which it would be of service. 
History was taught backward from current events, and be- 
gan in the story of the town and widened centrifugally to 
that of the county, the state, the nation, and the world. 
Culinary art and domestic science were taught practically 
to the girls. Parent conferences were organized, the school 
grounds were improved, a school bank started, and the 
older pupils even founded a civic club where local affairs 
were debated, and finally a school press was organized, 
which published a tiny weekly sheet devoted to local bet- 
terment, noting improvements, defects and needs in door- 
yards, gardens, houses, walks, and roadways, in which the 



A CONVERSION 161 

Cooley place often figured fiavorably. The seliool gardens 
and playgrounds, which had been begun years before but 
had fallen into neglect, were revived, enlarged and put to 
work, for the new school-mistress had traveled, read and 
thought much along the most progressive educational lines, 
to a degree, indeed, which had brought disaster to her in 
a larger and more censored and oversupervised school sys- 
tem in another part of the state. But Selma Sears clung 
to her own convictions, and here she was popular from 
the start, and her work was soon found so useful by the 
community that, as time passed, the committee, although 
its members often shook their heads at the new departures, 
did not feel sure or strong enough to offer much opposition. 
The worst thing about I\Iiss Sears was that she showed 
little evidence of being religious as this was understood by 
this community. She had attended church the first two Sun- 
days she had spent in town, but had not been seen there 
since, and w^hen she was approached by the superintendent 
(who showed some inquisitiveness about her religious state 
of mind and standing) about taking a class in the Sunday 
School, she had gone so far as to glance over the standard 
lessons she would be required to teach and declined **for 
want of time and strength." In fact, she had wisely de- 
cided that no salvation could come to this community from 
the droning church she had found there. 

Miss Sears sent a request to Cooley to bring her upper 
classes over to his place some Saturday, and when they 
came Cooley elected himself chairman of a reception com- 
mittee, the other members of which were his two sons and 
his two daughters. The latest novelties in farm procedure 
were demonstrated, and refreshments served, and thus and 
then it was that Cooley and Miss Sears, who had heard 
so much favorable and unfavorable of each other, met. 
Both realized that they were working for the same uplift 
to the community by different methods and that they 



162 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

thus had much in common. Cooley had by this time far 
more than regained his former self-respect, and had not 
only self-confidence but a strong vein of new ambitions, 
some of which, although he had hardly begun to realize it 
yet, extended beyond the limits of his own acres. In place 
of his earlier hectic religiosity there was a sullen, smolder- 
ing rancor against the cruel judgments of society, and espe- 
cially against the pharisaic righteousness of the church 
that, instead of forgiving seventy times seven, welcoming 
the prodigal, seeking out the one lost sheep, etc., had so 
lightly put its cruel ban upon a man's whole life, which 
had, save for a single lapse, been blameless. Selma Sears, 
too, had dismally failed in her first educational position 
and had her own little inferno of doubts whether all her 
weU-nourished and warmly cherished ideals might have to 
be, after all, unrealizable. But her years of success here 
had given her, too, new hope and confidence. Thus, as a 
result of this meeting, each felt that the other was an 
ally, and that there could and should be some kind of union 
of their forces. 

It was Selma who first suggested betterment meetings at 
the farm Sunday afternoons. To the objections of those 
who might hesitate at attending on account of the day, it 
was said that the church had allowed Sunday afternoons 
to go to waste till it had become not merely useless to the 
community, but often worse, for temptations follow in the 
wake of idleness. The first session was on gardens. Each 
told what he or she was doing. Then the elder Cooley boy 
told what he had seen at the College and what he had 
read, and new departures were suggested. Other sessions 
were devoted to flowers, poultry, sheep, livestock, water 
supply, walls and fences, roads, each of the chief crops 
of Stringfield, the new and the old education, newspapers 
and periodicals in connection with the old library now kept 
open every Sunday and every Saturday evening, the insti- 



A CONYERSION 163 

tutional church and church extension and federation, for, 
besides the larger church already mentioned, there were 
five other feebler ones in town. After much discussion, 
culminating in the annual town meeting, it was voted by 
a very small majority to open the Academy building to 
these meetings, and when they were held here educational 
themes were in order, especially the various forms of school 
extension. Cooley opened a special pasture for golf, and 
a ball-field was measured off here and three tennis courts 
fitted up, and a bath-house erected beside the old South 
Pond on which Cooley 's land abutted, and evenings the 
new barn floor made a good dancing pavilion. Here, too, 
light drinks were served at plain board tables. In the fall 
an amusement hall was erected, with light and heat, as a 
more permanent home for all these social activities, and in. 
it was a small, simple stage for amateur dramatics and a 
stand for the band which one of Miss Sears' teachers had 
organized. 

Thus Stringfield gradually came to be divided into three 
groups: first, the church people, religious, severe, or- 
thodox and uncompromising, and antagonistic to these lib- 
eral amusements; second, the saloon group, composed 
chiefly of the workmen and women in a large woolen mill, 
where almost the only foreign element of the population 
was found; while the Cooley-Sears group made up the 
third. The first and second were thus brought into a 
strange harmony in the bitterness of their antagonism to 
the third. Although they never ostentatiously made com- 
mon cause, none could fail to perceive that there was a 
very unique sympathy that was likely to spring up between 
the interests of these hereditary foes, for the church and 
the factory interests always voted against every suggestion 
emanating from the other group. 

The church was the first to weaken, and finally to capitu- 
late, for it was just at this juncture that there arrived a 



164 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

new preacher and his wife, whose acquaintance one of the 
Cooley boys had made, and suggested to his father, who 
had judiciously and very indirectly and diplomatically en- 
gineered him into his position. He and his young wife 
were fresh from their studies and with no experience save 
a year in social service work. He and his sagacious help- 
mate soon realized the situation. With great tact and in 
the face of difficulties that often seemed insurmountable, 
he organized an Inter-Church Young People's Club, and 
this was soon leavened by those members of it who had 
fallen under the Cooley-Sears influences. It was in some 
sense a conflict between the young and the old in which 
families were often divided. But it was a very vital and 
new bond of union between the hitherto aloof and often 
hostile sects, and its organization really came to mark an 
epoch in the history of Stringfield. And after much strenu- 
ous debate the Cooleyites were even invited to use the 
church buildings and grounds as they wished for their 
Sunday afternoon meetings, which had so far been held 
either at the farm or at the school. 

The Rev. Frank Burke was fearless and aggressive, and 
his wife winning. Cooley was invited back to full member- 
ship in the church with its now very socialistic, ethical, and 
non-theological creed, and he consented to return to the 
parish, but to the church never again. Selma Sears fol- 
lowed his example. In the new parish house, next to the 
church, there was a reading and smoking room and here 
two pool tables were set up with stands for cards and, 
strange to relate, these games under proper supervision held 
their own despite severe criticism. And thus the regener- 
ating influence of the play spirit was set to work. 

Meanwhile, the reports of these extraordinary and rapid 
new departures spread abroad, often at first in a most 
exaggerated and sometimes perverse form, so that visitors 
from a distance, at first social workers, and then teachers, 



A CONVERSION 165 

preachers, and a few young graduates and lawyers with, 
political ambitions, came. The two other clergymen who 
lived in the town began to Be seen at the Sunday afternoon 
sessions, amazed and shocked at first, but slowly realizing 
that their ministrations had been dull and unappealing. 
And thus they slowly awoke, as if from a long and tedious 
dream, and found new inspiration as they saw that even 
amusements that they had always opposed could be made 
not only innocent but regenerative. And slowly the oppo- 
sition, which had at first been vociferous and sometimes 
almost vituperative, subsided and the staid citizens of 
Stringfield, who had lived the lives of their progenitors 
with but slight and few concessions to the modern pro- 
gressive god of things as they are, began to feel in their 
hearts a new pride in their town and the recognition it was 
winning in the larger world outside. 

Now the common enemy was the great factory and the 
hotel with its bar, owned and operated by a strong absentee 
corporation, so that here a new strategy was needful. The 
long row of workmen ^s and women's tenements upon the 
lower street was crowded, unhygienic and squalid, and the 
moral condition of the employees was bad. At least half 
of them were of foreign birth, and there were almost no 
recreations and no social intercourse between them and the 
rest of the town. Here again, Cooley, now the leading and 
most prosperous citizen, was appealed to, and slowly and 
surely he began to feel a new responsibility. Thus, after 
some preliminary investigations, the three allies, the 
teacher, the pastor and his wife, called upon the resident 
manager of the factory and set forth such facts and statis- 
tics as they had been able to gather, concerning truancy, 
crime, immorality, intemperance, and living conditions. 
They told him that the new prominence Stringfield was 
acquiring in the county and state made the conditions as 
represented certain in the near future to be given unfa- 



166 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

vorable publicity, adding that in their opinion better wages 
and housing were imperative. Hickson listened to all they 
had to say, but expressed little sympathy, either in manner 
or words, but promised to bring the matter before the im- 
pending meeting of the directors. Ten days later he gave 
them their answer, which was in effect that under the pres- 
ent conditions of the market and of raw material his board 
of directors could not see their way just now to take defi- 
nite action but would not forget the matter, adding signifi- 
cantly that if changes were really needed they themselves 
would naturalfy be the first to see them, and would have 
the strongest motive to act without outside suggestion. 

Seeing in these temporizing generalities no prospect of 
amelioration the self-constitated committee realized that 
they must find another angle of approach. The first step 
they decided on was to bring in a trained investigator of 
factory conditions and his woman helper. After a few 
weeks their report was filed. It covered wages, profits, 
hours of labor, housing conditions, hygienic and moral sug- 
gestions. The showing was, on the whole, not less than ap- 
palling. In this establishment at this somewhat isolated 
place almost every law of safety against accident, disease, 
cleanliness, care of the old and disabled, school attendance, 
child labor, work of young mothers before and after con- 
finement, had been disregarded, and immorality and drunk- 
enness had flourished. The Factory Board itself owned 
and made a generous profit from the saloon and hotel. It 
also owned the groceries and other stores where clothing and 
domestic wares were sold at excessive rates. It tabooed 
unions and collective bargaining, hiring and discharging 
individuals at its own sweet will. 

When the substance of this report was laid before Hick- 
son his indignation was uncontrolled. The facts and fig- 
ures were met by a blank denial, and he insisted that these 
things were no business of outsiders and that such inquiry 



A CONVERSION 167 

without authorization of the company was impertinence, 
and challenged the reformers to do their worst. 

The battle was now on, for it was too late to beat a re- 
treat. Hence, at Cooley's advice a dozen of the most in- 
telligent workmen and two women were invited to the 
farm one Sunday afternoon and the outline of this expert's 
report, which was essentially true, was laid before them. 
To their delight the Catholic priest, who had ministered to 
most of the factory people who still held allegiance to any 
church, invited himself to this conference and proved most 
sympathetic and helpful. From him, too, it was found 
that there was a great deal of unrest and far more recogni- 
tion of hard conditions on the part of the toilers themselves 
than the committee had dreamed of. It was at this meeting 
that, after long discussion, the extreme method of a strike, 
which, despite its dangers, seemed on the whole the only 
way out, was finally agreed upon as the only expedient pos- 
sible under the circumstances, and to this end the details 
of procedure were worked out. 

We have no space or need to describe the stirring weeks 
and months that followed. Unionization, carefully drawn 
demands presented and denied, a walkout, a lockout, pick- 
eting against scabs, injunctions, and later riots and sabo- 
tage, and finally a great explosion and a fire that destroyed 
the mill and most of the tenements, marked the stages of 
this attempt at reform. Dynamite had been found near 
the big dam in time to save a part of it, but most of the 
lower village had been swept away, with some loss of life. 
The syndicate that had made the mill here a part of a larger 
trust system found it inexpedient to rebuild, and all that 
remained of its holdings was sold for a song to a group of 
local men, headed by Cooley, most of the employees mean- 
while having left town. 

With the dam partially and power-plant wholly intact, 
it was at length decided to utilize them. First a gristmill 



168 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

was built that ground what corn and grain it could and 
sold at moderate profits, such as meal, shorts, and other 
provender as was demanded by the farmers. Then came 
a new creamery, which connected and evaluated the milk 
with a Babcock centrifugal machine and soon made cheese. 
A new sawmill came next. Then electricity was generated- 
and sold, and finally, as there was still much power, a 
modern woolen mill of sufficient size to take care of the 
products of this sheep-raising county was built and put to 
work, and new cottage tenements of the latest patterns 
erected. An expert was brought in to test every employee, 
for general intelligence and efficiency, and each was given 
his place in the establishment accordingly. Moral stamina 
was evaluated as far as that could be done. The latest 
machinery was put in. A cooperative emporium was or- 
ganized and the principle of profit-sharing was everywhere 
adopted. The old hotel, which had been acquired by its 
proprietor from the company and which had held out 
against the rising tide of reform, at length capitulated and 
became a community house, and its bar was allowed to sell 
only beer and light wines. Easy terms were arranged for 
the workmen who desired to purchase their homes and the 
ample gardens that were attached to each. A trade school, 
the curriculum of which had special reference to local insti- 
tutions, was begun. The dangers of paternalism were rec- 
ognized from the start and the notion of self-help was al- 
ways and everywhere appealed to. Thus, in as many ways 
as the water comes down at Lodore, the lower street was at 
length redeemed and Stringfield came to be as proud of it 
as of its agricultural and social and religious progressive- 
ness. 

Now Cooley was nearing fifty and Selma Sears, who had 
been his active coadjutor in so many of his community ac- 
tivities, was thirty-five. Both his sons and his elder daugh- 
ter were married and lived in nearby homes of their own. 



A CONVERSION 169 

His farm was well maimed and lie began to relax from his 
arduous labor, wbile Miss Sears* school now almost ran 
itself. Both of them had a pleasing sense of tasks success- 
fully accomplished, numerous as were the details that yet 
required attention. Both had time to look in a broader 
way at the present and to wonder what the rest of their 
lives had in store. Both had passed the age of romance, 
and each respected the character and the achievements of 
the other. So absorbed had both been in their work for 
the community that they had had little time to think of 
their personal relations, despite the fact that they had 
been very close and confidential. Their cooperation had 
always been complete and sympathetic and of late each 
had come to recognize a new kind of self-consciousness in 
the other whenever they met. Each, too, had asked what 
it meant, but neither had quite found any acceptable an- 
swer.* It was Cooley who did so first, and he acted with 
characteristic promptitude. 

One June evening after supper with his men, instead of 
returning to the field to finish the day 's work, as he gener- 
ally did, he walked across the fields, when the sun was set- 
ting, to Selma^s cottage. He had not changed his working" 
garb, and found her in her flower garden. He had never 
called on her thus before, save in exigencies where his pur- 
pose was obvious and anticipated. But if she felt some 
mild surprise and curiosity she did not show it. 

**I have come to talk to you,'* he said, as they sat on a 
rustic seat under the cherry blossoms. **We have cooper- 
ated with and understood each other pretty well all these 
years. ' ' Then "he paused. 

*'Yes," she said, calmly enough, but not without a faint 
flutter of anticipation. 

"We have come to know each other, too, pretty well, 
haven't we?'* 

*' Surely," she said, '^I think we may say that." 



170 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

**We have had about the same aims and have never had 
any disagreements." 

**That is true," she replied, *^ except about the school 
playgrounds," a matter where their views had been at 
first widely divergent, but in which hers had finally pre- 
vailed. 

He ignored this. '*And we can honestly and modestly 
admit that we have done some good for this town. ' ' 

*'I am sure you at least may say that," she said. 

*'Do you know," looking her fully and searchingly in 
the face, * ' that just before you came here I was practically 
expelled from the legislature for being beastly drunk on 
the floor of the House?" 

''Oh," she cried in great distress, **you must not speak 
like that. It is too horrible." 

* ' That ^s just what it was, horrible. So you have heard ? ' ' 

**0f course," she replied, "I heard the gossip when I 
first came here and I half believed it at first and was not 
anxious to know you, but I saw long ago how unjust it was, 
and everybody has practically forgotten it." 

*'No, it will never be forgotten, although it may now be 
pretty well silenced, but the worst you have heard was 
probably not so bad as the truth. But," he went on, "I 
liave atoned and I want to tell you what will probably 
strike you worst of all, that I do not regret it, that it was 
the best thing that ever happened to me. It showed me 
what the world was and how bitter, how cruel. It showed 
me the bigotry of pious Christians and, what was a thou- 
isand times more precious a lesson, it taught me that there 
were recuperative powers within the soul 9,nd that there is 
no salvation save that which a man achieves for and in 
himself. It showed me that we must live in, and make the 
best of, this world, and that if we cannot achieve Heaven 
here we never can do so elsewhere. It taught me what 
hypocrisy is and what a smug life I had led. But for that 



A CONVERSION 171 

great awakening I should have remained as I was to the 
end. That experience with drunkenness, disgracing myself 
and the town I represented, awakened me, for in a sense 
I had been asleep. It was like the light and voice Paul 
saw and heard in the desert. The sanctimonious thought 
that when I came home and had to leave the church I 
was entirely beyond the pale, and I almost felt at times 
that I was in a sense converted downward, as it were 
*devilward'! But if it was Satan's doings, I am now his 
disciple. ' ' 

''No, no," she broke in, stopping a wave of eloquence 
that had surprised them both. ''You shall not talk like 
that. You overcame. It was a magnificent fight and a 
magnificent victory. You were a hero. It was all so won- 
derful, more so than I have ever known, heard or read of. 
It is not only you but this town that has been regenerated. 
It is not the devil, but the spirit of the Blessed Christ that 
has possessed you. I think He has inspired you to do all 
that has been done in this town. You are a true follower 
of the dear Lord, although you do not know it. ' * She broke 
off abruptly and her face flushed as she felt her enthusi- 
asm had found too frank expression. 

""Well," he said, now more calmly and deliberately, after 
a long pause, "what I came for was to tell you that I have 
at length realized that far more of my good work than I 
knew, such as it is, has been inspired by you.'' 

"How can that possibly be?" she said, with genuine 
surprise and a new thrill. 

"Why," he said, "I heard all about your leaving your 
first position, and how bitter and personal was the struggle 
which culminated in your dismissal. I was encouraged to 
see how splendidly you had organized victory out of de- 
feat." 

Again she flushed, but added, * ' I hoped that you had not 
heard of that, but I knew and felt that we had something 



172 RECREATIONS OP A PSYCHOLOGIST 

in common. In a sense we were both conquering our past, 
but what I have done is nothing compared with your 
work. ' ' 

**Well/' he said, "now we understand each other. What 
is the next step ? What does the logic of events point to ? 
What have we yet to do?'' 

''What?" she said. 

**We must marry, or else the whole story will be unfin- 
ished.'' 

''Oh!" she cried. 

"We are both beyond the callow, gushy age of romance, 
or I would have told you on my knees, perhaps, that I be- 
lieve I have long loved you, although I have, in fact, but 
lately realized it. Do you want me to kneel and tell you that 
I cannot live without you ? Indeed, I can perhaps hardly 
honestly say that. You, too, do not need me for support 
or protection, but we do at least like the things we have 
done together and stand for. We are both mature and 
sensible. We are not too far apart in age. Our temperaments 
fit. We might or might not have children. That we could 
naturally better decide later. The school could now dis- 
pense with your services, unless you wish to continue them 
in such ways or to such a degree as you can make compati- 
ble with your new duties. We ought to make a new home 
together which should be a center of the social influences 
stiU so needed in this community. I have tentative plana 
for a new house which you shall help me complete. I have 
thought it all out in the last few days. It doubtless seems 
sudden to you and you have had no time to consider. I do 
not expect your answer now, much as I want it. You will 
have many things to consider. This is my errand, and now 
it is done. Good-by until I have your answer." He ex- 
tended his hand as he rose from the seat. 

"One moment," she said. "I like your manly way of 
asking me. I respect and honor you far more than any 



A CONVERSION 173 

other man I have ever known. I think I love you, but I 
cannot be sure just now what I ought to do. You know it 
would involve a very great change for me. How glad I 
am that you do not try to carry my heart by storm, like 
the hero of the stage or the novel. Come to-morrow night 
for your answer.'* 

They parted with a firm and somewhat prolonged hand- 
clasp. That night each of them sat late under the trees of 
his and her yard, and each retired and slept soundly and 
serenely, and on the morrow both went to their work out- 
wardly calm but inwardly preoccupied and tense, but on 
the whole happy. Almost at the stroke of seven he ap- 
peared, this time in his best suit, when she met him in her 
best attire. They walked to the seat by the cherry tree 
in silence. Before they sat she faced him. ''Yes,'* was 
all she said. 

"I hoped, thought, even prayed that that would be your 
answer," he said, and pressed her yielding form to his 
breast with one long fervent kiss. * ' And now, ' ' he said, as 
they sat down, "how soon can it be?" 

''Term closes next week," she said, "and then I can be- 
gin preparations." 

"Why not the next day, and make preparations after- 
ward?" he said finally. And it was so agreed. 

The wedding was simple and at twilight under her 
cherry tree. There was no honeymoon or journey, but 
after receiving congratulations from all, for half the town 
responded to the general invitation to all that wished to 
attend, they retired to his home. 

The first days in their married life were spent in contem- 
plating plans for his new home, which he had already 
projected on a site nearby, and a year later it was com- 
plete and a house-warming party was held, and the old 
house given over to the "help." Flowers were planted 
and shrubs placed in abundance, and a spacious garden 



174 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

was cultivated behind the garage, and here they often re- 
ceived their friends. 

Some years have passed, and as we ring down the cur- 
tain we see here often at play a boy of four and a girl of 
two on the lawn. Samuel Cooley was a bom symbolist, 
although he never knew it, and in the center of the com- 
plicated arched window over the front door there was a 
design in colored glass of a big, yellow lemon. ''Fate 
proved how a lemon could be made lemon-ade. ' ' It was a 
clumsy pun, and the only one he ever attempted. The 
lesson of their lives had been that there is a redemptive 
power in the depths of human nature in all of us that can 
bring the best results out of the direst evil. 



IV 

PEEESTABLISHED HARMONT 

A MIDSUMMER EEVERY OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

One raw, cold day in January just before nightfall, Pro- 
fessor Hardipan, of Boston, was walking slowly and ab- 
stractedly from his laboratory to his lodgings, nearly a 
mile distant. He was a somewhat hard-headed, positivistic 
man, on the shady side of forty-five, who had already won 
a very prominent place in the scientific world. He was a 
psychologist of the empirical, experimental school, inter- 
ested in human nature generally, and especially in every- 
thing that was exceptional and out of the way. He had 
frequented prisons, asylums for all sorts of defectives, was 
very fond of studying the ways of animals, somewhat bluff 
in his manner and perhaps a trifle crabbed in his disposi- 
tion. He was an incorrigible old bachelor, a member of 
a club of plain speakers, devoted to roasting each other, 
and was past president of the nil admirari club. He had 
long ago eschewed society, but had a rather strange foible 
of reading, thinking, and speculating about marriage and 
woman in general, and was widely read in all sorts of sta- 
tistical, physiological and sociological literature bearing 
upon tlie subject. His friends in whose presence he occa- 
sionally vented his views about doubling man's rights and 
halving his duties feared he was almost in danger of be- 
coming a woman-hater, yet he was at bottom a good-hearted 
man, a fast and true friend, and some of his blunt and 
outre notions were thought by those who knew him best to 
savor of affectation. 

175 



176 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

He wore a heavy, dark fur overcoat, buttoned with loops, 
and carried under one arm a portfolio of charts and a few 
books, and a ease containing a physiological instrument in 
the other hand. The snow was very deep and a fresh 
storm was evidently just beginning, and where the snow 
had not blown from the icy sidewalk it crunched under foot 
with a dry, crispy noise, the cause of which he had investi- 
gated in a special memoir. His thoughts were busy, quick- 
ened by the frosty, gusty air, and he was annoyed at the 
crowd of shopgirls who just after the closing hour thronged 
the streets on their way home. He finally struck out into 
the open common which became more and more secluded 
the farther he penetrated it, and soon found himself in one 
of the narrow and unfrequented walks near the center of 
it, where the snow had been shoveled for many a rod into 
a high wall on either side, when suddenly he became aware 
of a lady walking rapidly in the opposite direction. He 
observed that she was absorbed in a revery of happy mood 
for she seemed in the dim light to smile to herself, quite 
unconscious of his approach. Just at that point the snow, 
that had been melted in the sun on the north side, had 
frozen so as to make the pathway much higher upon that 
than upon the other side. He was not a gallant man, and 
with his head bowed, continued doggedly upon the lower 
side, characteristically slackening his pace for her to pass. 
This she would have done readily enough had not the ice 
upon the upper side, which he left for her, been as smooth 
as polished glass, so that she slipped suddenly back trans- 
versely to his side of the path so close in front of him that 
the bobbing feather of her hat actually tickled his nose and 
he felt her warm breath for an instant upon his cheek. 
Not for many a long year had his lips been so near a girlish 
face. As she stepped quickly back he observed in the -gath- 
ering night that she was fair, fresh and young, and that 
she was blushing crimson at the awkward accident. 



PREESTABLISHED HARMONY 177 

Professor Hardipan had been brought to a full stop, but 
with characteristic promptitude and a natural attempt at 
gallantry he bravely stepped up the slippery side with a 
sudden spring that would have carried him safely round 
her where she stood, so that each could have gone on his 
way, had she not stepped quickly back half frightened by 
his sudden spring. Thus it came about that as he glided 
down to the lower side as she had done instead of having 
passed her, they were again as before, face to face. The 
books under his arm had gently touched her shoulder, al- 
most like a good-natured and confidential nudge in the 
ribs, and she got the peculiar odor of the laboratory that 
always enveloped his person like an aura and even smelled 
the cigars in his vest pocket, that for an instant were not 
six inches from her pretty nose. Had not her muff and 
the professor 's box acted as a buffer, their proximity would 
have been still closer. 

They stood thus but an instant, when by a simultaneous 
and natural impulse they both sprang with a strong impetus 
to the steep side, each with the design of allowing the other 
to pass with a wide berth before the inevitable slide. So 
exactly together was this design conceived and executed, 
however, that there was a square collision at the top and 
both slid slowly down four feet face to face to the other 
side again. In the instinct of saving herself from a fall, 
she automatically clutched at the portfolio of anatomical 
charts under his arm, which fell and lay open at their feet 
at an introductory cut of human figures facing each other. 
She was the first to spring away, while Professor Hardipan, 
as angry as so petty a vexation could make a petulant 
and tired man, ground his teeth and clenched his fist as he 
stooped down to pick up his charts. Unfortunately, how- 
ever, the loop of his fur coat had caught in the button of 
her jacket and her recoil had been so sudden that the pro- 
fessor was literally jerked off his feet and fell upon his 



178 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

face before her. Books, cigars, and instruments were scat- 
tered by his side, and she perforce was bending over him. 
This tableau, however, was ended quickly, for she stooped 
Btill lower (as if whispering into his ear as he afterward 
humorously said) to relax the tension of half his weight 
about her neck and unbutton the sudden attachment be- 
tween them. 

She might easily have sprung over his knees and gone on 
her placid way as the deep and rare oath of rage, whether 
at himself, or her, or the fates that were thus suddenly and 
relentlessly enmeshing him in their web, no doubt prompted 
her to do. "Who shall tell why she lingered and helped 
collect his scattered luggage, while he slowly regained his 
feet? Why, before reencumbering his arms with his par- 
cels, did he not take her gently by the shoulders and waltz 
her around in half a circle safely to the other side of him- 
self ? Why above all did she notice the scratch upon his 
nose from which the blood was trickling and ask, in the 
tenderest inflections that ever modulated a woman's voice, 
if he was hurt ? Why did he reply only by a defiant snort 
of anger and thus lay up food for future remorse, as her 
sweet tones echoed and reechoed afterward in the deepest 
chambers of his heart ? Wliy did no one come along ? Why 
had any one of the thousand things not happened so that 
they should not have met at all or a few rods sooner or 
later? If any of these things had been otherwise, the story 
of these eventful seconds in this unromantic spot, where 
the course of true love, it was afterwards plain, had proved 
all too smooth, would have ended here. 

As it was, however, when he was up and had full pos- 
session of all his traps, Professor Hardipan seemed a trifle 
mollified, and he slightly — let us hope, gracefully — inclined 
his head to his fair vis-a-vis as he was about to step lightly 
aside for her to pass. But once more, for truth is incredi- 
bly stranger than fiction, by one of those rare concomitant 



PREESTABLISHED HARMONY 179 

variations we often experience upon the street or sidewalk, 
where it is impossible always to turn to the right, she cour- 
teously and simultaneously did the same. Instantly both 
dodged back now but half the width of the narrow walk, 
and back and forth they went several times, each about the 
same distance and at the same rate. 

It was a clear case of what Leibnitz called preestab- 
lished harmony between two hu^man beings. No two pen- 
dulums, it seemed to the professor, ever swung with more 
perfect uniformity, and he declared afterwards that the 
awful thought occurred to him that they might, if breath 
and muscle had been unfailing, have gone on thus till morn- 
ing. Each for an instant suspected the other of design, 
but as they paused and looked into each other's eyes, it 
was evident that all the thoughts and energies of both were 
now bent solely and intensely upon ending this most em- 
barrassing encounter. Each threw a hasty glance behind 
as if with the thought of turning round and giving up the 
pass, but as they faced each other again it was evident that 
vexation had gradually begun to give place to another 
quaint, if somewhat scientific fancy, in the breast of the 
professor. It flashed, across him that this must be a ease 
of perfect identity of the personal equation which he had 
investigated and which has been said to be the same in no 
two human beings. Here were two independent human 
wills, both automatically free, yet perfectly constrained 
and indeed checkmated, as it were, by the other. It sug- 
gested to his psychological mind an indefinite perspective 
of inner harmonies, which might be the other's fate, coun- 
terpart, or what you will, just as the hypothetical Brun- 
dusian ass if ''exactly" between the two bundles of hay 
would surely die of starvation. Up to this moment at least 
he would have ridiculed the Platonic legend that flitted 
through his mind of male and female created in pairs or 
rather as one monadic soul, which Jove later split like a 



180 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

sorb apple with a horse-hair, and which malign fate had 
shuffled with other halves through the world. Here the 
halves of an original whole were brought together again in 
their rarest affinity. This timid, palpitating, blushing, yet 
courageous creature had awakened the greatest interest he 
had felt toward any individual in all her species these 
many years. His fair encounteress appeared to be the 
one in all the world peculiarly adapted to be questioned, 
observed, studied, experimented on at close range. She 
somehow seemed to carry a key essential to his deeper self- 
knowledge. She might possibly sometime be made to love 
him beyond the dream of the Patient Griselda herself, 
enough even if he required her to submit to X-ray ; but no, 
such a thought at least must be absolutely forced out of 
his mind. Such, at any rate, is a tolerable account of Pro- 
fessor Hardipan's consciousness at the end of the first 
minute after he first saw the unknown girl, who still con- 
fronted him. 

Thus it came to pass that it was with something like 
genuine good feeling that he said in tones more bland and 
apologetic than those he was wont to listen to from his 
own lips, the simple words, *' Please excuse me,'^ as he was 
about to deposit his bundles in order, we suppose, to take 
her hand and chasse half round. Judge then of his utter 
astonishment to hear at the same time the same words, 
** Please excuse me,*' from her lips in perfect soprano ac- 
companiment, not only of tone and pitch but inflection and 
cadence. He stood erect and stared into her face in dumb 
bewilderment. If his own shadow on the ground had risen 
up, or his own image in the mirror had stood forth and 
spoken to him, it would have seemed no less a miracle. 
Nay, he could hardly trust his senses. It must be a dream 
or hallucination, a mirage and entoptic delusion, a ghost 
strayed from the rooms of the telepathic society or con- 
jured up by some mischievous necromantic agency as yet 



PREESTABLISHED HARMONY 181 

unknown to man. Perhaps he was bewitched with a vision 
of beauty like the knight in Tasso's enchanted forest, and 
he must violently break the spell that was upon him. He 
stepped back, and like a mirrored reflection, she did the 
same. He decided to walk straight on, over or through the 
phantom, but she advanced apparently with the same hardy 
and desperate impulse, and he instinctively shrank back, 
and she did the same. 

It was thus evident that not only their actions but quite 
likely their thoughts and feelings were falling into conso- 
nance; some mystic agency was cadencing their souls into 
complete unison. Would they ever be able to separate and 
go different ways? Each had perhaps hypnotized the other 
at the same time and in the same way and with the same 
kind of suggestion, for even such things he had read ac- 
tually sometimes occur. How and by whom could such a 
spell that seemed to link their very souls be broken? 

A faint smile, that had irradiated both faces for an in- 
stant, now vanished and both renerved themselves to quell 
this sudden apparition of destiny between them. Each 
sprang to the upper side and tried to clutch the snow on 
the high drift at the top with greater energy than before, 
but were able only to meet and by no means to pass each 
other. To whichever side each turned the other did the 
same, till the very gas lights in the distance seemed to wink 
and leer at them faintly, and yet more faintly. The curve 
of muscular fatigue itself was the same for both. It was 
no use; they must both with stoic resignation accept the 
inevitable with what joy they could. Nothing could be 
done. Their very breathing and loud heartbeats he fancied 
were both utterly and hopelessly synchronous. As they 
paused again and for the last time, chagrin and confusion 
not unmixed with anger and petty despair were depicted 
upon both countenances; but as their eyes mirrored each 
other again, each face brought home the utter ludicrous- 



182 EECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

ness of the strange adventure, dispelling all other feelings, 
and both broke forth into laughter. Lightly and cheerily 
it rang out upon the frosty air. His was lighter and heart- 
ier than his friends had ever heard, but hers kept both time 
and tone, and some good genius prompted him to say, '*It 
is plain, miss, that one of us must turn back. "Will you go 
my way or shall I go yours?" She faltered in reply, '*I 
will go yours, ' ' and turned promptly about. The spell was 
broken, but a far more lasting spell was upon his heart. 

In emerging from that unfrequented walk, they found 
themselves in the south side of the park, and his house was 
just across the way. He ventured to ask her to allow him to 
attend her to her home, after leaving his books and instra- 
ments at his own door. To this she modestly, yet with 
some evident embarrassment, consented. It was a long 
walk, but we will not prolong the story. *'Will you go 
my way for life ? " he said — and they married a few months 
later. 

Professor Hardipan, though by no means a model hus- 
band, has never been suspected of any designs of experi- 
menting upon, still less of analyzing, his wife in the cause 
of science. His instincts are rather of an opposite, syn- 
thetic sort, and three children have already blessed their 
union as I write.^ 

Mrs. Hardipan 's version of this story is far less extraor- 
dinary. We have adhered strictly to his. Hardipan 's mir- 
acle or conversion, as it was called by his cynical friends 
in the club, was regarded as an egoistic semi-myth, gradu- 

* It is perhaps worthy of remark that this plain tale here told, with 
literal and kinetographic truthfulness, illustrates how severely the old 
classical unities of time, place, and action may be adhered to with 
the most objective conformity to facts; viz., whole time of action ex- 
actly two minutes; place or space of action 6x4 feet; action itself 
except the fall, an admitted defect, a pendular smus vibration, the 
simplest of all dynamic unities on a plane surface of two dimensions. 
It is for these merits chiefly that this story claims a unique pre- 
eminence over all others ever written. 



PREESTABLISHED HARMONY 183 

ally evolved to excuse to others and explain to himself how 
it was that such a man as he came to fall so suddenly 
and desperately in love. Gossips of the other sex have 
whispered that it was a coquettish woman's trick to catch 
the attention of an eligible, rough diamond of a bachelor. 
Some have declared it was a wager and that Jeanette Moore 
had even boasted beforehand how she would do something 
like the above. Others more friendly have declared it was 
in a spirit of pure, unpremeditated, girlish frolicsomeness 
that she dared to balk a bearish don, simply because it 
happened to come into her head to do so, on the street, 
where his face was well known. For ourselves, we have 
no theory about the matter, but are sure that no man can 
be happier than the professor, and we see no reason why, 
were he not a scientific man and a free thinker, he ought 
not to thank God daily that he has become, as in the strange 
providence of love every bachelor may, a married man. 



GETTmG MAREIED IN GERMAlTy 

Mary and I had been engaged nearly a year and a half, 
so that our story begins where most others end. We had 
both been in Europe several years: I had been working 
for my degree at Berlin and Heidelberg, and she had 
been living quietly with her mother at Munich, Florence, 
and finally at Dresden, studying the languages, and paint- 
ing a little in water-colors. Mary thought it would be nice 
to be married in Paris, but there were rumors of so many 
formalities and possible delays that we had given it up 
and agreed that Germany should be the favored land ; and, 
as each of us chanced to have either friends or relatives in 
Berlin, it was decided that that should be the place, and 
that June should be the happy month. *'Let it be the 
first, ^' I had pleaded, and she had consented. We planned 
to go quietly in the morning to some little church, or to 
some clergyman's study, and afterwards, perhaps, to ask 
our friends to a lunch or breakfast in a private parlor in 
some hotel — such as I had once been invited to by a friendly 
Docent in the university, who married on an income of 
-Qnq hundred dollars a year. 

One lovely morning early in May. two weeks before my 
final examination, I received a letter from Mary saying she 
had heard that I could not possibly be married without a 
passport. Her friend. Miss Allen, had a cousin whose 
chum, an American, had been married in Germany, two 
years before, to a German lady, and it had first to be done 
at a common police office, she wrote, and there a passport 

184 



GETTING MARRIED IN GERMANY 185 

was required. Now Mary knew that I had criminally 
evaded the German law, and this was the way it came 
about: Before I had been settled two days in Berlin my 
kind-hearted landlady took occasion to explain to me that 
I must be announced at the police office, and that there a 
passport would be demanded within ten days. A passport 
would cost twenty-eight marks, she informed me, at the 
office of the American legation; and if I cared to save 
money, and would give her ten marks, she would risk the 
penalty (as she had done before for my countrymen, for 
whom she had a great liking) , and not announce me at all, 
and I could remain unmolested and unrecorded as long as 
I wished. I had paltered with the temptation, and finally, 
with the aid of an extemporized theory about the relations 
of natural and legal justice, villainously capitulated, and 
saved eighteen marks. 

Here seemed, at first sight, a dilemma which was not to 
be evaded without a plump lie. If I obtained and pre- 
sented a passport now, I should be asked how long I had 
been in the city, and if it were more than two weeks I 
might possibly be ordered to leave for violating the city 
ordinances, as an unfortunate acquaintance of mine had 
been six months before. My landlady would certainly be 
heavily fined for not announcing me, and possibly, if her 
other delinquencies in that line should come to light, she 
might be also deprived of her pension license. If, on the 
other hand, I declared that I had just arrived, my answers 
to the long cross-questioning to which I was liable to be 
subjected at the bureau might excite surprise, and a single 
inquiry at the post-office or of the letter-carrier would be 
sure to involve us both in far deeper complications. I 
promptly remembered the Trinkgeld I had so long for- 
gotten to give the postman, and sought counsel of my land- 
lady. She at first seemed quite dismayed at the situation, 



186 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

but at length reminded me that a few days before I had 
made a trip to Potsdam. 

*'Give me your passport/* she said, **and remember, 
you arrived in Berlin last Tuesday evening/' Precisely 
what she did with it, or told the police, my conscience never 
let me inquire; but a few days later I was summoned to 
the police office, where, in answer to many interrogations, 
I explained that I had been in the city sometMng more 
thrni (t week; did not know precisely how long I might 
stay, but would give information when I decided; that I 
was there to study, and what ; that when I did leave I might 
go home, and might travel, and where; and at last left 
with a light heart, feeling that my answers had been so 
transparent that if there had been any suspicion that I 
meditated another attempt upon the venerable Kaiser's life 
it had been effectually allayed. The next morning I was 
waked at daybreak by a call from a magnificent police offi- 
cer, who politely explained that the bureau had some trou- 
ble in deciphering the middle name of my honored Frnwi 
mother. Foreign names were sometimes very hard, he 
added. I wrote it out (in my rohe de nmt, upon the back 
of my visiting-card in the steadiest hand I could command 
• — Cymantha) , and handed it to him in the corridor through 
the peep-hole in the door. He apologized again, saluted, 
retired, and came no more. A week later my passport was 
returned with a number of official stamps upon it. I 
carried it thenceforth always with me, as we never fail to 
carry our legitimation cards after matriculation, feeling 
that in the big green seal of the legation and the fair round 
hand of our ambassador I possessed not only a sort of war- 
rant of citizenship in two countries, but a key to the ady- 
tum of Hymen's temple. 

My examination was now to occur in a week. I had paid 
my preliminary fee, almost finished my thesis, and waj 
cramming at my very best pace with a team of three other 



GETTING MARRIED IN GERMANY 187 

Eepetemien. Still I had found time to order my wedding 
suit and get the bridal ring, with June 1st and my initials 
engraved on it, and one morning I ran into the house of our 
American clergyman, long resident in Berlin, to ask him 
to perform the ceremony. What was my consternation to 
be told that the laws of Germany would not allow him 
to marry us! 

'*But," I pleaded, *'we are Americans. It might be done 
quietly, and the authorities here need not know it. I am 
sure it is none of their business." 

'* There is a new international arrangement — I don't 
know precisely what; but I am positive it would not be 
safe for either of us to attempt it, ' ' he said. 

I retired, meditating that the reverend gentleman had 
no fine feeling for the delicacy of a situation like ours, to 
say the least. 

After losing several hours, now very precious for study, 
in puzzling over the matter, I resolved to call upon our 
ambassador himself. Ill though he was, he received me 
very kindly. 

**Are American citizens ever married in this oflBcef I 
inquired. 

*'It has been done once only, I think, under one of my 
predecessors; but there were some very exceptional rea- 
sons.*' 

*'Well and good; that is my case. Can you marry me 
here next Wednesday?'' 

*'The lady is not ill, I hope?" 

*'Not in the least." 

**Then your best way is to go to England. If you 
choose the simplest form, and are married by an independ- 
ent clergyman, it is necessary only that one of the parties 
should reside there two weeks before the ceremony can be 
performed.'' 

**But that is really impossible in this case," I replied. 



188 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

* * My — Miss — that is, the lady is rather High Church, and I 
have an examination just ahead. Besides, we have made 
all the arrangements for here and the first of June." 

'*I think I may say you will find that out of the ques- 
tion.'' 

*'Then you refuse — ^you really cannot do it?" I asked, 
with a strange, unsteady feeling ahout the corners of my 
mouth. ''Is not this office construed by international law 
as American soil?" I added, bringing out the grand stra- 
tegic point of all my morning's meditation. 

''So far from it under the new arrangement, if it were 
done here and knowledge of the fact should come to the 
ears of the authorities, not only should I myself be seri- 
ously compromised for ignorant or willful violation of the 
laws I am here to see observed, but the officiating clergj'-- 
man would be arrested at the door, and the marriage would 
be declared void, even in an American court, and even 
though tlie case be first tested years hence. A marriage 
must now be valid according to the laws of the place where 
it is celebrated, or it is null and void, ' ' he explained. 

I made an ill-disguised attempt to smother something in 
my throat, and I am ashamed to say I retired awkwardly, 
abruptly, ungratefully. What a fool I had been not to 
learn this before; and Mary would, of course, think so, 
too, however much I might plead intense preoccupation 
with my studies ! It could never be concealed, and it would 
be a joke which my acquaintances would never forget. Be- 
sides, her dresses were probably all ordered or ready, and 
everything would be out of fashion, perhaps, long before 
the German authorities — ^whom I knew to be very fussy 
about such matters — would let us get married. Mary's 
father had left his driving business for six weeks to see 
the ceremony, and was now upon the sea, and I knew must 
go back with his wife in July. My old chum, Will Murrey, 
who had been spending the vrinter in Italy, was to be in 



GETTING MARRIED IN GERMANY 189 

Berlin in time to act *'best man*' for me so far as was 
needful, and I knew Mary had asked Miss Punto to sustain 
her in whatever sense might be needful during the cere- 
mony. Besides, early June was the best time, so everybody 
said, to start on a trip through the provinces along the 
Danube, where I had planned to make our wedding tour. 

It was in no very happy frame of mind that I sat down 
that night to write the result of my day's investigation to 
Mary. What I wrote I no longer remember, nor will she 
aid me to do so. It must have been, to say the least, queer, 
for when I pressed her afterwards to let me see that letter 
she seemed very serious, and confessed at last that she had 
made a note on the margin of it which she did not wish me 
to see, but kindly searched the letter out and burned it 
before my eyes. 

I waited nearly two days for an answer, during which I 
was, of course, in no mood for work. After all, she wrote, 
it was perhaps just as well. She would prefer to wait 
rather than to go to England, unless her father should very 
strongly urge it. It would be nice and funny, as well as 
probably very impressive, to take the Lutheran forms, she 
thought, and ended by exhorting me not to let trifles like 
that interfere with needful preparation for my degree, be- 
cause when she did marry me she had her heart set on 
being a Frau Doktor, 

This time I was bound to make sure work, and so, with 
the best information I could procure, started off for the 
civil bureau (Standes Amt) to ascertain precisely what was 
required. 

* ' Upon what business do you come ? ' ' demanded the pom- 
pous servant at the door. 

'*I am an American citizen, and want to know how to 
get married in Germany," I faltered. 

He opened the door of the main office and shouted, * * Ein 
Herr Amerikaner wishes to marry himself!*' and then 



190 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

showed me into a large and well-filled waiting-room to 
take my turn, every occupant of wMch gazed fixedly at 
tine without winking for some minutes. One thin, dark, 
wiry man, in soiled linen, and bright yellow kid gloves, had 
dropped in to announce the death of his third wife. A 
trembling young mother was sharply reprimanded for let- 
ting the legal third day pass before announcing the death 
of her child. A somewhat seedy clerk had come, with a 
radiant face, to announce the birth of a boy fourteen hours 
old, and to be called Johannes Conrade Hermann Degener- 
meister. A servant-girl and her lover were waiting in one 
corner — she red and giggling, he erect, dignified and taci- 
turn as a head- waiter — ^to be made man and wife. I had 
plenty of time to observe, for nearly an hour passed before 
my turn came. At length I was shown into a long room, 
with half a dozen clerks at one end, who twisted their necks, 
adjusted their glasses, and gazed and listened with open- 
mouthed wonder. 

**I wish to get married in the very simplest and quickest 
way," I said, presenting my passport. **Will you please 
tell me how to do it?" 

**It is extremely simple," said the officer. *'We must 
have a certificate of your birth {Geburtsschein) signed by 
the burgomaster of the town in which you were born, and 
with its seal, and witnessed in due form. Your certificate 
of baptism {Taufsdimfi) should also be sent, to guard 
against all error, sealed and witnessed by the present pastor 
or the proper church officers. These must be presented 
here by each of the contracting parties, with their pass- 
ports, as the first step." 

I carefully noted this, and he proceeded: 

*^The parents, if living, should certify to their knowledge 
and approval of the marriage. "We must also be satisfied 
that there is no obstacle, legal, moral, or otherwise, to it; 
whether either of you have been married before, and if so 



GETTING MARRIED IN GERMANY 191 

whether there are children, and if so their names and ages. 
The parents' names should be in full; also their residence, 
occupation, age, and place of birth should, of course, be 
given for record here." 

- I begged for another scrap of paper and made further 
notes. 

**When we have these here in this desk," he continued, 
patting fondly that piece of furniture, "then either we 
can publish the bans (Aufge'bot) by posting a notice of 
your intention in the BatKhaus for fourteen days, or else 
you can have it printed in the journal of the place where 
you reside in America, and bring us a copy here as evi- 
dence that it has actually appeared. After the expiration 
of this time you can be married in this office." 

* * Must it be here ? " I queried. 

**0f course," he said. **This is the only place which 
the law now recognizes. Poor people are content with civil 
marriage only, but all who move in good society go from 
here to the church for a religious ceremony." ! 

'''Is it not possible to shorten the time?" I timidly ven- 
tured to inquire. ''We had made all the arrangements for 
an earlier day, and are seriously incommoded by the delay, 
I did not know the requirements. It takes four weeks to 

hear from America, and then two weeks more, here, and 

You do not, perhaps, exactly understand, and yet I hardly 
know how to explain. But there is really haste. We are 
pressed for time." 

"Haste? Pressed for time?" he repeated. "Perhaps I 
do not understand. I am sorry, but it cannot possibly be 
sooner. You think we are slow in Germany. True, but we 
are sure. We require our people to ta*ke time to think over 
the matter beforehand, and divorce with us is far from 
being the easy matter I have heard it is in America." 

I was in no mood for opening a discussion of the statutes 
of Indiana, and so demurely withdrew, feeling that it was 



192 RECREATIONS OP A PSYCHOLOGIST 

no use to try to wriggle into matrimony through such mazy 
meshes of red tape, and that Mary would, of course, now 
consent to England. This was naturally implied through- 
out the letter I dispatched that evening. But I was mis- 
taken. She ''could not think of England for a moment 
now. It would be 50 interesting in Berlin, '' she wrote. We 
could be very comfortable for six weeks. The middle of 
July was not very late, aft;sr all, in that latitude. I must 
write at once the details of the requirements, and she would 
send for her papers. I complied, and sat down to write 
for mine. 

Now I happened to be born in a little, remote Western 
hamlet, where I did not at present know a soul, nor in all 
probability did my parents. How to get the certificate of 
my birth, or, in other words, to prove at the civil bureau 
that I had been really and legally born, was no trivial mat- 
ter. I finally addressed a detailed and courteous letter to 
the mayor of Hornersville, begging him to have the fact 
and date of my birth from the town sent me, witnessed and 
over the town seal; and in order to inclose two dollars in 
United States postage-stamps, I ran at random into the 
nearest bank. I was counting out my German money, and 
the first clerk had gone to the back office for the stamps, 
when the brisk junior principal stepped up and asked me 
if my head was in any way diseased. I thanked him heart- 
ily, but not without some surprise, and assured him that 
it had never been better. ' * Because, ' ' he continued, ' ' it is 
customary in our country to remove the hat in all offices 
of this importance. ' * I doffed it instantly, and begged par- 
don, I am sorry to say, before I thought; and, although I 
had been taught the same lesson once before in a little 
shoe-store, regretted passionately half the way home that 
I had not thoroughly wrung his impertinent nose, in honor 
of the American eagle. 

I next passed to the consideration of the baptismal ques- 



GETTING MARRIED IN GERMANY 193 

tion, the precise relations of which to the natal problem I 
have not been able to this day precisely to understand. 
The least forgery or evasion was, of course, not to be 
thought of, however justifiable in a moral point of view I 
might deem it under the cruel circumstances, because that 
would make the marriage itself null and void. This I 
clearly inferred from my interview at the civil bureau. 
Moreover, no certificate whatever could have the least value 
unless it was stamped with an official seal ; and, again, every 
error would necessitate an additional delay of four weeks; 
and, lastly, it was better to do too much than too little. 
These ground categories, I reflected, must never be lost 
sight of. 

Now the fact was I 'had never been baptized. My father, 
although a good church member, entertained, twenty years 
ago, some rather independent views on the question of in- 
fant baptism, and so, despite my jnother's wishes, the mat- 
ter lingered until I was too big. In Germany, where every 
boy baby must be either baptized or circumcised, I was a 
monster, for whom her law made no provision. Mary's 
parents held no latitudinarian scruples, and she had been 
baptized thoroughly as an infant, and again later by im- 
mersion. Why had no one hinte'd to me, when I left home, 
that it might be convenient to take a Taufsdiein along 
with my passport! 

After instituting inquiries, I ascertained that, among 
several other obstacles, I was now too old to be baptized in 
Germany, and that an English baptism would not help me. 
I could not think of leaving my examination and crossing 
the ocean to be sprinkled in the normal way. Only one 
thing remained, Tiamely, to get my parents' pastor and 
parish clerk to certify amply and strongly, under oath and 
seal and before witnesses, that, although duly born, I had 
never been duly baptized, and that such omissions, unfor- 
tunately, were not infrequent in the United States, and 



194 EECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

were attended there by no civil or temporal disabilities. 
In my letter I begged my parents to send a certificate of 
their consent to my marriage, giving them a favorable de- 
scription of Mary, enclosing her photograph, and gently 
hinting at the end that if they withheld their approval it 
would simply necessitate our running over to England. 
Another letter to my uncle, who happened to be a district 
judge, begging him to certify that I had never been married 
before, and that, according to his and my families' best 
knowledge and belief, there was no obstacle, ''legal, moral, 
or otherwise," to my marriage with Miss Mary Adelaide 
Prout, of New York, seemed to me to complete the busi- 
ness. Yet, no: it would be best to have the bans printed 
in our little home pap^r, strange as it would look there, 
and*have a copy — or better two, in case a steamer should 
be sunk at sea — ^sent me. That might save two week^. And 
again, it might be well to copy all these letters, and send 
a duplicate of each a week later, to make assurance doubly 
sure. If there should be any additional delay by error, 
there would be some consolation in having the fault on 
Mary's side, I reflected. I now had thirty-six hours for 
cramming before my examination, and at it I went. 

Here were the lecture notes of five semesters and two 
small shelves of text-books which ought to be reviewed. 
As the case seemed desperate, I resolved to concentrate my- 
self on anatomy and chemistry, where I was weakest, and 
risk the seven other ample sciences which a doctor is re- 
quired to know. Two of my examiners were aware that I 
had been a diligent student, and I would get a certain 
good friend of mine to call on another of them and hint 
that I had been distracted by family troubles, and per- 
haps, in case of need, they would advocate tempering jus- 
tice with mercy, and letting me through easily, as it is said 
is often done with American students. I worked well all 



GETTING MARRIED IN GERMANY 195 

day and till about one o'clock at night, and then fell asleep^ 
over the group of peptones. 

At nine in the morning, while I was taking my coffee, a 
letter came from Mary, requesting more detailed directions 
for ordering her papers, and when it was answered I 
realized that I was in a mood which made study impossible. 
I took a bath and ran into the gymnasium, but was no bet- 
ter; drank a glass of beer, and read the American papers 
at the bank, but grew worse; then started off for a long 
walk in the Thiergarten, and came back only in time to 
make my toilet for the dread ordeal. In evening dress, I 
was ushered into a long room and seated at one end, while 
my examiners were discussing a comfortable spread at the 
other — paid for, I knew, out of the two hundred thalers 
I had given for being admitted to examination. Of the* 
three hours of mental anguish I here endured I will attempt 
no description. I was passed from one inquisitor to an- 
other, and at last, after waiting ten minutes in an ante- 
room, recalled to learn that, notwithstanding the excellence 
of my theme, and my diligence, good conduct, etc., my ''oral 
examination had not been in all respects entirely satisfac- 
tory''; and I was advised to take advantage of the new 
regulations, and present myself again as a Bepetent in the 
autumn. 

I retired, scarcely knowing what I did, and walked bare- 
headed in the cool night air a couple of hours, overwhelmed 
with shame, wondering over and over again what Mary, 
what my parents and friends, would think of me; and at 
last returned, jaded and haggard, designing to slip into 
my room unobserved and seek the oblivion of sleep. What 
should I find, however, on opening my door, but my hostess 
and several friends festively drinking wine around my 
table, on which was a magnificent piece of confectionery 
like a skeleton Gothic tower. It had turrets and minarets 
and festoons, and was wreathed in flowers, and a ginger- 



196 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

snap banner high above all was d«one off on one side in 
stripes and stars with red, white, and blue candy-work, 
and on the other side stood Herr Dohtor above my initials. 
Herr Studiosus Ottfried "Wilhelm Griesebach, my best Ger- 
man friend, sprang up and hugged and kissed me in spite 
of myself, and the congratulations of the others were so 
loud and given with such beery impetuosity that it was 
some time before I could make them comprehend the awful 
truth that I had "fallen through." They were really si- 
lenced then for an instant, during which I caught a 
glimpse of my hostess, with real delicacy of feeling, stealth- 
ily breaking off the candied, doctored ginger-snap banner 
and slipping it slyly into her pocket. 

It was but for an instant, however, and it was Herr 
Griesebach, to my surprise, who first attempted to meet 
what he considered the demands of the occasion. Springing 
again to his feet, and, I actually believe, brushing away a 
tear, he thumped upon the table, and cried Silentia! in 
true convivial German-student style, though it was just 
then as still as the grave. 

** Honored Herren/^ he began glibly enough, **love and 
science are jealous rivals, but thrice, four times happy 
the man who is favored by either. Our dear friend was 
going to become a doctor one week and wed a beautiful 
girl the next.*' 

**The bride lebe hocJi!" shouted one of my visitors, and 
all rose, clinked their glasses, and drank deeply, nodding 
and smiling to me. **The gods were envious and in their 
councils it was ordained that instead of completing a four 
years' course of medicine then, as he intended, he should 
pause for a short course on the German marriage law. In 
his native land'* — '* Americans leben JiocJi!^^ was shouted 
and drunk to as before — **they say, I have heard, that time 
is money.*' [These words in English — all he knew, I be- 
lieve ; but he graciously repeated them sotto voce in German,- 



GETTING MARRIED IN GERMANY 197 

with a benevolent glance at my hostess.] "Well," slowly 
shrugging his shoulders and raising his eyebrows, ''our 
friend's faculty has given him four months' time," lay- 
ing his forefinger aside his nose at the word ''four," and 
tapping it again at the word "time." This was execrable 
and exasperating enough, it will be confessed, and I sup- 
pose that my face fell still more and that my convivial 
friend noticed it; at any rate, he stepped to my side, 
grasped and wrung my hand, and added in changed and 
almost tender accents, ' ' I have been in the university eight 
years. My head is mossy enough, but of the many American 
students I have known our friend is the only one with true 
German Gemuth; and before I say dixi I propose that we 
rub a vigorous salamander to the Herr Brdutigam. Let 
him live high, high, high ! " he cried, raising his glass and 
drinking long and deep, as did the rest, after which all 
rattled their glasses noisily at his command till he gave 
the usual signal for silence, and then sat down. 

He had done his awkward best, and so did all the rest 
in more informal words of consolation, but it was of no use. 
It only revealed to me how great and lifelong in German 
eyes was the disaster which had overtaken me. 

When they had gone I sank back in my chair (a rocking- 
chair, by the way, which I had got made only with infinite 
pains, after satisfying myself that I could not obtain one 
otherwise in all the city ; indeed, it was the only one I ever 
saw in all Germany), and tried to think things over calmly 
and gather courage; but the longer I sat the more com- 
pletely unmanned I became. I could think of nothing, in 
fact, but the words, "I have failed! I have failed!" kept 
repeating themselves in my mind over and over again, like 
the inexpugnable, "Punch, brothers, punch with care," 
etc., which Mark Twain has described. I sat there for 
hours, benumbed, in a sort of oriental trance. I had no 
wish, no strength even, to go to bed, though I knew dream- 



198 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

ily that my condition was morbid. I remember thinking, on 
the whole, rather favorably of the project of going back 
to the Thiergarten and shooting myself, as an American 
student had done in the autumn before — without a quar- 
ter of my provocation, I was sure. But that would require 
too much effort. Many other absurd things flitted through 
my mind, while the day dawned and the sunshine stole in at 
my feet. I wished for half an hour that the window of 
my room was open; I knew the air was not the best, but 
I could not summon the resolution to get up and open it. 
At length I was roused by the knock and entrance of my 
hostess, who informed me that my usual breakfast hour 
wais considerably passed. I ate mechanically, and came 
back to my chair in a room with freshened atmosphere, and 
slowly began to realize that I was suffering from a nerv^ous 
reaction which might become indefinitely serious. I will 
not here pause to go into professional details. Suffice it 
to say that, following the best medical advice, it was several 
weeks before I at all recovered my health and spirits. 

During the first few days I had been too listless to do 
more than glance over Mary's letters as they came, and 
deferred answering them, always only for an hour or two 
at a time, till at length, on the fourth day, becoming really 
alarmed at hearing nothing from me, she had come on to 
Berlin with her mo'ther, and surprised me at dinner. She 
seemed to understand the situation at once; found out — 
Heaven knows how — the regimen that had been prescribed 
for me, and kept me up to it. She got me out on long 
walks, astonished me by her own endurance as my com- 
panion, and did her best to amuse and keep me cheerful. 
It must have been a dreary task, for I was so blase to 
every intellectual interest, so indifferent to every enthusi- 
asm, or even to my own future, that only true love could 
have made my companionship endurable. And yet she 
brought me slowly out of my trouble back again to life. 



GETTING MARRIED IN GERMANY 199 

Four weeks had meanwhile elapsed. Mary's father had 
come and returned alone without her mother, and I began 
to hear from my home letters. First came my parents' 
consent to my marriage to Miss Prout, drawn up in stately 
and formal terms ; for iny father was a country squire, and 
knew something about how a legal period should be stuffed. 
At the bottom of thfs my sister had roguishly imprinted 
the motto of her class in the seminary, of which, as secre- 
tary that year, she chanced to have the metallic stamp. It 
was a Greek translation of the phrase, ' * I will find a way 
or make one." It was as big as an English penny, and 
with a bit of red ribbon affixed looked so imposingly official 
that I thought it best to let it stand; and good service it 
did me in the end. 

My uncle, the judge, promptly declared that to the best 
of his knowledge there was no obstacle to my marriage, 
and affixed the stamp of the county to his certificate that I 
had never been married before. 

Then came the baptismal paper, and a most lame and 
beggarly document it was. First came the statement of 
the pastor. He had good-heartedly taken it upon himself 
to instruct the German government all too elaborately that, 
much as it was regretted, it was, nevertheless, a fact that 
scarcely one-half of the native-born Americans were nowa- 
daj^s baptized, as the ceremony was not here required by 
law. After some expatiation upon this point, he graciously 
added that he had always seen much to commend in the 
German practice in the matter. His declaration was ac- 
companied by my father's apologetic statement of his ear- 
lier scruples about infant baptism. From my letter and 
inclosure to the mayor of Hornersville I have never heard 
to this day. I had, however, anticipated this possibility, 
and as, fortunately for me, all four of my grandparents 
were living, asked them to certify to the dates of my par- 
ents' marriage and of my birth. This they did, and as 



200 RECREATIONS OP A PSYCHOLOGIST 

the town where they resided possessed no stamp or seal, the 
town clerk good-naturedly pasted round pieces of green 
paper and a few inches of red ribbon at the bottom of each 
declaration. These documents, making with my passport 
seven in all, were carefully laid aside. Within a week 
Mary had the same number of papers, and, without stop- 
ping to examine them, I made them into a formidable 
budget, and again visited the civil bureau, only to learn 
that they must all be officially translated, and that each 
paper must bear the two-dollar stamp of the American 
legation in witness of the accuracy of the translation. As 
the office was then quite full of business, five or six days 
elapsed before this was accomplished. Upon returning to 
the German bureau, carrying now twenty-eight documents 
instead of fourteen ^some of which, however, proved even- 
tually to be useless or superfluous), it was promptly found 
that Mary's papers certified to her two baptisms, but failed 
to make out that there was no legal or pecuniary obstacle 
to her marriage. I had heard of the tedious litigations 
about inheritances which, under the former laxer laws, had 
grown out of carelessness about this point, but suppose^ 
Mary's mother, who had remained with her, could satisfy 
the authorities upon that point. Therefore I waited in 
silence for my own papers to be examined, hoping that if 
my irregular baptismal certificate was challenged, Mary's 
supererogatory baptism might be somehow vicariously cred- 
ited to me. Mine, however, was accepted, but nothing 
which Mary's mother could do or say was sufficient to sat- 
isfy the German law that I might not be capturing an Heir- 
ess by methods which it deems inadmissible. There was, 
therefore, no way but for Mary to cable her father in New 
York, ^'Certify consent and no pecuniary obstacle to mar- 
riage," and for us to wait two weeks more for the docu- 
ments. A delay of another fortnight was needful for the 
bans, or Aiifgehoi. Mary herself began to be impatient. 



GETTING MARRIED IN GERMANY 201 

It was August, and the heat was intense; all our friends 
had left the city, and both my best man. Will Murrey, and 
Mary's friend. Miss Punto, had returned to America, and 
were eventually married before we were. The dresses were 
getting out of season and out of fashion, and it was too 
late to travel anywhere but in Russia, Sweden, or Scotland, 
and we were not as enthusiastic about any of those countries 
as we had been about the Danube. 

But the day long sighed for, long delayed, came at last. 
As IT had to be my own best man, and attend to all the 
thousand and one little unexpected jobs that turned up, I 
had hired a faitliful man-servant for a week, to whom I 
entrusted the arrangements at the church, the preparation 
of the spread, the care about carriages, getting off the bag- 
gage, etc. Before I escaped m the morning, the house por- 
fer, three servants, the washer-woman, coal man, two serv- 
ants from the laboratory, and a tailoress called — most of 
them in their best attire, and several bringing flowers or 
bouquets — to give me their parting Gliickwunsch, expressed 
in all the pretty phrases for such occasions in which the 
German language abounds. They were all moderately feed, 
but were happy. Some of them almost wept — so I fancied 
— as I drove off with Johann mounted beside the driver. 
Mary was ready, and with a half dozen friends we were 
soon in the Tittle back parlor of the civil bureau. Here 
again was a long delay. One of the two witnesses required 
by German law was six months too young, and not one of 
our friends had the requisite papers of legitimation with 
them to take her place. One of the latter was personally 
known to the officiating squire, and another was the wife 
of a well-known public man, but this was not *' regular.*' 
Even my servant had no * ' paper with a stamp ' ' about him, 
and none of the idlers in the office, who are sometimes called 
in for a shilling in such emergencies, was any more fortu- 
nate. One of Mary's friends became indignant, and be- 



202 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

gan a caustic history of our vexatious delays in broken 
German to the officer, until at length he turned his back 
upon her, tore off his swallow-tail coat, which had been 
donned for the ceremony, put on an inky gown, and re- 
tired to his desk, leaving us to find a way out of the fuss 
as best we could. None of the party lived nearer than two 
miles away, but luckily one of them remembered a lady 
acquaintance upon the next street, and went forth to find 
her. Although she was ill, she rose, dressed, took her pa- 
pers, and drove to our rescue. The marriage service was 
rather long, and under other circumstances might have 
been impressive. When it was done we signed our names, 
I took a few more papers for use at the church, tipped four 
bobbing ushers who had opened four doors for us, left or- 
ders for a marriage certificate — which is not necessary in 
Germany, but which we thought might be interesting to 
our friends at home — and got into the carriage. 

"Mary," I said, "we are really and truly married al- 
ready, and let's cut the church. It is an hour and a half 
late ; our friends will all have been tired waiting and have 
gone home. Besides, I have stood about enough of this. I 
have kept patient during two months of this rigmarole, but 
I am afraid a reaction is coming, and that I shall knock 
the minister down." 

She replied only by pressing my arm more closely with 
her own as we stopped at the church door. A carpet was 
laid, and the organ struck up as we were ushered up the 
main aisle and seated in front of the altar in velvet-cush- 
ioned chairs. The clergyman had become tired waiting for 
us and had gone home to lunch, and we sat there ten min- 
utes until he came in, out of breath, in a black robe and 
skull-cap. The length of this service depends somewhat 
upon the fee which he expects, and we found it very long. 
To me, at least, it was not particularly solemn. He whis- 
pered to us in broken English what responses to make, and 



GETTING MARRIED IN GERMANY 203 

where to kneel, stand, join hands, etc., as if he feared we 
did not understand German. When it was all over there 
were extra fees : one for the fine chairs we sat in, one for 
opening the church, another for the carpet on the side- 
walk, and one each for the organist and bellows-boy. We 
were invited at the door to buy photographs of the church 
and clergyman, and his pamphlet discourses, and a printed 
copy of the Lutheran marriage service. We did so, and 
drove off to our spread. The thing was done at last. 

Here, too, my story ends. It is my first, and will be the 
last I ever write. Marriage ceremonies and preliminaries 
were never made so complex, it is said, as the civil mar- 
riage law — the compulsory clause of- which was repealed, 
I believe, last spring — ^made it in Germany for foreigners; 
and therefore only the eight or ten American couples who 
passed the same ordeal during^its full operation are as 
thoroughly married as we. 



VI 
A MAN'S ADVKNTTmE IN DOMIESTIC UraiTSTBIES 

A STALWART young college professor, a friend of mine, 
lately spent the summer vacation at his home trying to 
write a book on industrial education for girls, a work not 
yet published. For exercise, tiring of his wheel, chest 
weights and dumbbells, and stupid solitary walks, and 
wishing to use his strength practically, he lately did a 
week's washing for his family of six under the direction 
of his laundress, and to her mingled amazement and amuse- 
ment. He tells me he never learned more, or more rapidly, 
in the same time, and that neither in the gjonnasium, on 
the tennis court, nor on the golf links did he ever get quite 
such varied or hygienic exercise. 

In the splendid freedom of a collarless, cuffless, un- 
starched shirt, an old pair of discarded and unsoilable 
pants held up by a belt, in low slippers, he went about the 
day before with a large washbag gathering sheets, towels, 
handkerchiefs, skirts, napkins, under- and night-clothes, 
from nursery, bathroom, bedrooms, and closets, that the 
preliminary mending might be done. He applied salt and 
lemon juice to rust stains, a special acid to ink spots, and 
other things in bottles for grass, berry, and other stains; 
he rubbed lard on the greasy places, and soft-soaped some 
of the most dirty spots and things. He put everything to 
soak in three set, stone tubs in the basement washroom, 
keeping the white and cleaner things by themselves; and 
he also sawed, split, and laid kindling under the big copper 
cauldron by the tubs. 

204 



ADVENTURE IN DOMESTIC INDUSTRIES 205 

After ransacking the college library and worrying its 
chief for literature on the subject of laundries, only to 
find that no one had ever put together all that needed to 
be known, he resolved to assign it as a master's thesis to 
fhe next girl graduate who consulted him. But he has 
suggested it to one only; she told him plainly that she 
came to college to get away from such things, and seemed 
grieved and almost affronted lest it imply he thought her 
incapable of a loftier career and theme. He told her that 
one of the best commencement parts he had ever seen was 
at the well-known Oread cooking school, where a girl in a 
mortar-board hat, but with bare arms, washed one shirt- 
waist and ironed another before an audience, telling them 
at the same time what she did and how and why. It was 
all in vain, for to this the young lady replied that she was 
not seeking a diploma as a washerwoman, and would die 
before she would do such a thing in public, and so would 
all the rest. So that settled it. 

Next morning when the college chimes rang six he was 
already at his work, with the enjoyable sensation of bare 
feet a la Kneipp, and sleeves up to his shoulders. 

He ensconced his laundress in a wicker chair in a cool 
corner, near an open window, to direct. They both agreed 
that Chinamen who sprinkled clothes with water from 
their mouths were filthy, and that the steam laundry, which 
used acids and tore off buttons with machinery, even if it 
did make things whiter, was not suitable for real Vere de 
Vere families or for climbers who would be true top- 
notchers. She gave him nuggets of information in a rich 
brogue about soaps, a kind of lecture so meaty that he 
wished to stop on the spot and note points. 

From the anatomical laboratory my friend had procured 
a pair of rubber gloves used in dissections, but soon dis- 
carded them. First, he gently punched and prodded the 
soaking mass in the tub containing the cleanest white 



206 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

things, soaping and wringing a little till his inspectress 
was satisfied, and transferring everything into the already 
bubbling cauldron. In the next tub it was dirtier. To get 
down to first principles, he had discarded washing ma- 
chines and wringers and went to work on the washboard, 
an imitation of which has been cleverly smuggled into the 
list of gymnasium apparatus under the imposing and 
euphonious classic name of sthenico-dynamo-generator, or 
chest strengthener. This he found an ideal apparatus for 
the pectoral muscles and for those of the back and shoul- 
ders, combining some of the best movements of rowing, 
parallel bars, and sawing wood. Here, indeed, he felt he 
had found an athletic bonanza. In wringing there were 
half a dozen exercises, always on the principles of opposi- 
tion of the two forearms, and all a distinct improvement 
upon the hand-wrist-twist-weight-lifter of the gymnasium. 

The clotheslines of white cotton, which had been taken 
in weekly and Fept in a bag, were strung on trees over his 
hedge-protected back yard. Unlike wires they were in- 
capable of staining. After carrying his first tubful, weigh- 
ing one hundred and thirty-seven pounds, up the steps and 
some eighty feet, he stretched each garment_out synunetri- 
cally — not without soiling a few, however, which had to go 
back — hanging white garments in the sun and colored ones 
in the shade, fastening each in place with a basket of 
wooden pins, which he had learned meanwhile could be 
bought at ten cents for six dozen. 

Now the trophies of his toil swung like banners in the 
glorious wind and sun. Thus he persisted, keeping woolen 
garments in successive waters of a cool and constant tem- 
perature to avoid shrinking, boiling the linen and cotton 
with a tablespoonful of kerosene, a little bluing, and just a 
pinch of sal soda. 

After three hours, during which he snatched a hasty 
breakfast, his work was done — soon after nine o'clock — 



ADVENTURE IN DOMESTIC INDUSTRIES 207 

and he had himself photographed, standing before the 
drapery he had cleansed, proud as a huntsman beside his 
first bear, or a fisherman with his best catch. At nine- 
thirty A. M. he had taken a cold bath, re-dressed, and was 
at his desk with a clear head, an exuberant sense of well- 
being and of having done something, and a bit touched 
with conceit, leaving to his mentor the more unheroic task 
of bringing in the wash when it was dry. 

To be sure, his knuckles were a trifle raw and sore and, 
athlete though he was, his forequarters were a little tired. 
But he had tasted all the gamy flavor of camping out with- 
out a hot and dusty journey to get there and back. He 
almost — but not quite — resolved that henceforth he would 
always do the wash, and not throw away so wholesome and 
inspiring an opportunity for physical culture to be enjoyed 
by paid servants. Now at least no washerwoman's union 
could boycott him. The servant may have dimly felt his 
thoughts, for as the task went on she passed from volubility 
to taciturnity and glumness, possibly fearing that she 
would suffer from future economy and retrenchment. 
However, the first act of the drama was successfully ended. 

I wanted to print the photograph of my friend as 
he stood six feet one, weight one ninety-eight plus before 
and one ninety-seven minus afterwards, deducting his 
breakfast which he was methodical enough to weigh. His 
modesty, however, forbids me. Were he the first woman in 
the land, he declared, he would have been proud to let it 
appear. He marveled that there were no young ladies 
perhaps just from the high school, or normal school, or 
college who would set the world a new fashion, and won- 
dered whether they were all too coy and shy of the many 
Calebs in search of a wife who would chortle with joy and 
fall at their feet if they had shown this proclivity for the 
domestic life. 

To think of it seriously, why this horror of washing, 



208 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

especially when many society ladies confess to me con- 
fidentially that they do it and love it in a small way — 
privately ! Schuyten found in a comprehensive census just 
published that less than two and one-half per cent, of the 
giri students in the teens had ever wished or planned to 
devote themselves even to domestic life in general, although 
seventy-five per cent, were proposing teaching or other 
culture careers, and a great majority of them would prob- 
ably sometime marry — so little does our educational system 
fit young women for their destiny! How many of them 
to-day ever did or could do a good washing, or have either 
the brain, muscle, or endurance for it? 

Tuesday, again at six A. M., my friend was in the laundry 
cleaning and firing the stove, and getting out and polishing 
the flatirons, and preparing three qualities of starch. 
There was no mangle or roller and all was by hand. In 
ironing, however, he had to be shown as well as told by his 
teacher, for this was skilled labor and of a very different 
order. But he was patient and docile and learned to avoid 
tearing off buttons, ripping openwork, making holes with 
the point of his tool, scorching, etc., and got a few points 
about ironing in creases and folds, to tow up well into 
plaiting, not to rip delicate tissues, how to use different 
irons in relays and to tell when each was too hot or cold. 
At nine o'clock, leaving most of the hardest things to his 
expert, he arrayed himself in the things he had ironed 
himself, even a bosom, collar, and cuffs, and was photo- 
graphed again with his pile of garments beside him, which 
he then distributed to their places. 

Mending he did not undertake yet. His courage was still 
triumphant, but the heat and the mental and nervous strain 
had told upon him, and some of his fundamental ideas 
about woman and her work were a little joggled. He 
became conscious of a silent sense of superiority on the 
part of his employee toward him, and wondered if hence- 



ADVENTURE IN DOMESTIC INDUSTRIES 209 

forth it might be harder for her to feel all the respect due 
to the head of the house. Several bums distracted his 
attention from his study, although he had learned and 
applied some valuable recipes new to him which might 
come in handy in other circumstances. 

His six-year-oid girl complained at dinner that the collar 
of her white dress scratched her neck and was as stiff as a 
board, and the precious pocket in her apron would not 
open, and he noticed that his own collar was a little limp 
and spotted, which required him to change it later. His 
thirteen-year-old girl, in the fluffy-ruffles stage, seemed 
conscious throughout the evening of something wrong 
about the one garment of hers he had attempted, but his 
devoted wife never let him know that some of his chef- 
d'ceuvres had to be starched and ironed over again. She 
tactfully answered his inquiries during the week, whenever 
he saw one of his own bits of handiwork in use, that all 
was well, that even the clean napkins did not open too 
hard, and that it was all the style now to have them so 
stiff and pasteboardy that they would stay put and almost 
stand on end. 

What puzzled him most of all was how the laundress, 
who had never read a book or an article, and never took a 
lesson, learned to do all these things, for the effects of 
never-printed tradition and long practice were hardest of 
all for this professor of books to appreciate. He ransacked 
his library in vain to find any trace of the evolutionary 
history of this art, or to learn the how, when, and where of 
the development of the instruments and the skill. How 
accomplishments like ironing could have developed in the 
race and been transmitted for countless generations with- 
out any of the adventitious aid of print, was to him a 
marvel. Here he feared he must leave a great gap in his 
book on household arts and education. 

Wednesday was cleaning day, and he started off feeling 



210 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

quite himself again. First lie took all the rugs from the 
library to the yard and beat them weU and long, learning 
to stand on the windward side. This, together with rolling 
and unrolling and carrying them, he found capital exercise, 
as was taking the furniture out into the hall. Sweeping, 
too, was dead easy, but going over the floor on hands and 
knees with a wet rag set back the shoulders, brought out 
the chest, strengthened the cuculares, complexus, biventer, 
and erectores trunci, and many other muscles. Almost 
nothing woman does or can do, he declared, could be quite 
so hygienic, although going over every part of a chair with 
a dust rag requires so many positions that it is a close 
second to floor scrubbing in hygienic value. 

Dusting the mantel and bric-a-brac and handling all the 
books was careful, puttering work, and in doing this he 
had several lessons in the delicacy and deftness of manipu- 
lation required, and also a lesson in charity to servants 
who have accidents with ornaments. He also learned much 
of sequences as well as of patience, and even to marvel at 
the acuteness of perception of his wife, now his overseer, 
as she detected spots of dust which he had left not only in 
the crevices but in the openest spaces. Furniture and 
picture frames, he declared, should always be plain, with 
no groovings or flutings; every floor corner should be 
beveled ; there was no use in having so many useless things 
about for mere ornament ; windows should never be opened 
to let in dust; decorated china and everything repousse 
and in relief should be eschewed ; and books should be kept 
behind glass cases with rubber-fringed, dust-tight doors, 
with flaps at every keyhole. 

"WTien he asked his wife to mark the grade of his excel- 
lence in this morning's work, she gravely said that there 
were three demerits for breakages, that he deserved about 
forty-five for dusting, seventy-five for wet-ragging the floor, 



ADVENTURE IN DOMESTIC INDUSTRIES 211 

pointing out his defects, and one hundred plus for rug- 
beating and handling. 

This ended the third lesson with many new types of 
physical culture of hoth fundamental and accessory 
muscles, and new knowledge and viewpoint of women's 
work and ways which he had seen from the outside before, 
but never till now felt or appreciated. He wondered if he 
ought not to advocate in his book that all intending hus- 
bands should be required by law to take the course he was 
now giving himself before they embarked on the sea of 
matrimony, a consideration that probably will be amplified 
in his volume in a way that I think will command the 
thoughtful attention of housewives who may read it. He 
fancied that marital ties would be cemented if the lords of 
creation acquired such intelligent sympathy and apprecia- 
tion of their wife 's responsibilities as this experience would 
insure. 

After these experiences my friend felt an inspiration to 
take a vacation the rest of the week, and the next week 
his wife and children spent with her parents, leaving him 
alone with the servants. Monday morning he resolved to 
give a stag dinner to eleven of his friends, to some of 
whom he had long felt under obligations. He also wished 
to feel that he could do it alone en regie. So, after a care- 
ful inspection of pantry, ice box, and cellar to note the 
supply already on hand, and having timidly broached his 
purpose to the cook, studying from several cook books what 
courses Be wanted, he sallied forth to the market. 

Clams on the half -shell with lemons and ice were easily 
provided for; so was soup, with vermicelli and rice, a 
favorite of his. For fish, he wished his guests to have each 
a good brook trout, but found it closed season, with a 
stringent law well on. The fishmonger told him confi- 
dentially, however, that there was a way of providing them 
at about twice the usual cost, and so he culpably com- 



212 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

pounded with crime and ordered them. A crown roast of 
lamb with peas gave little trouble; but, in providing the 
ice, which in his judgment must have rum, he realized that 
he lived in a no-license town. But here again the grocer 
knew a way, and again he became a silent partner in crime. 
He had set his heart on partridges, at least half a one for 
each guest ; but this the game laws seemed to make improb- 
able, and he could only leave an order to provide them if 
practicable, otherwise to fall back upon squabs or snipe 
with mushrooms. Thus he became thrice a potential 
criminal. 

The ice cream must be made at home and cast in indi- 
vidual molds, and these he had to find to his taste and buy. 
Nuts, Porto Rico coffee, sweets, ginger, apollinaris, and 
other minor items were provided, and wines he fortunately 
had. And so he went home, with some complacency, after 
several hours of nerve-racking and mentally fatiguing 
work. 

But now his real trouble began. The cook absolutely 
balked, and declared she could never prepare all these 
dishes without the superintendence of the mistress, and 
that the home-made ice cream in individual molds was im- 
possible. He thought, too, that he detected in her mind 
lack of confidence in her ability to prepare the trout as he 
wanted them, and she declared that, if she undertook the 
entire task, she must have three dollars extra and a helper. 
Being unwilling to apply to his neighbors for the loan of a 
cook he set out for an intelligence office, and learned of an 
expert, whom he at length found in a remote part of the 
city, who would bestow her efforts for the day for five 
dollars, but must be supreme. At this his own cook, at 
first flew into a downright revolt, threatening to bolt at 
once, bag and baggage. But by promising her an extra 
three dollars, she consented, though with no very good 
grace, to the conditions. The chambermaid agreed to serve 



ADVENTURE IN DOMESTIC INDUSTRIES 213 

at the table, as she had often done, but let it be plainly seen 
that she, too, expected to do so for a consideration. He 
wished^ another table girl in the same kind of black dress 
with white cap and shoulder-strap apron, and she suggested 
that a friend of hers would be willing to come in for the 
evening for a proper fee, although she had no uniform. 
She was found, taken to an establishment, duly fitted out 
for eleven dollars and a half, and at seven P. M. my friend 
sat down to his solitary meal, excited in mind and body, a 
real case of nerves which perturbed his sleep with painful 
dreams. 

Happily, he little realized what was before him the next * 
day, on which I perhaps ought to draw the veil. I will not 
enumerate the things found lacking or the orders which 
came late, or not at all, so that sudden shifts had to be 
made; nor how his colored man and he were subjugated 
the entire day and kept running by the cook, who was an 
empress in the kitchen for ten hours. Nor will I describe 
the friction between the special and the stated help, the 
discovery, when the table came to be laid, that several 
plates and glasses in the sets required were one or more 
pieces short, and the further shifts, trips townward, and 
purchases thereby made necessary; how, when he came to 
don his tuxedo, no clean, broad-bosomed shirt was found 
save one he had ironed and which it made his very soul 
groan to wear; how both the trout and squab for some 
mysterious reason proved one short, so that he had to 
decline both rather than let one guest go unserved in these 
courses; how very promptly each invited guest arrived; 
how long the initial wait before dinner was announced, or 
how long the delays between several of the courses; how 
anxious he was throughout, in contrast to the ease and 
confidence he had felt when giving dinners in which his 
wife had borne all the burdens he was now bearing and 
had given no sign; how light of heart he grew when the 



214 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

coffee axid cigars were served, and especially when a 
familiar guest praised the perfection of an establishment 
that could give such a dinner; how pride tempted him to 
reveal the fact that he had done it all and that his wife 
was not only not in the kitchen at all, but one hundred 
miles away, and in blissful ignorance of his treacherous 
invasion into her domain. Nor will I describe his feelings 
when later he added up the cost of his little dinner per 
plate and compared it with what he might have offered 
approximately the same for at the club. But it was all his 
own, his very own. And it would be easier next time, only 
this time was quite enough for him for the present. But 
this adventure in domesticity he felt sure would outrank 
all the others in its bitter-sweet memories when it came to 
the olim meminisse juvabit, which was kept fresh in his 
mind during the subsequent days, when his own lonely 
meals were made up of or interlarded with the remains of 
his Sybaritic feast. 

Cooking, to him, had come to seem the art of arts. Man 
is what he eats, and ever since Prometheus gave men the 
control of fire, they have been evolving this ''preliminary 
digestion,'^ every advance in which sets free more kinetic 
energy for culture and civilization. Good cooking, too, is 
the only cure for intemperance, and bad cooking its only 
cause, he held. He had studied the chemistry of foods a 
little and experimented a little with Fletcherism and the 
opposite theory that food should be bolted; he was a little 
heretical about the advantages of regular meal times, and 
inclined to the view that eating only when one was hungry, 
and what one most wanted, was best for the system. He 
tried to teach his children geography a little by telling 
them where each item on their table came from, how it 
grew, was prepared for the market, etc. He told them, 
for instance, of the habits of salmon, mackerel, swordfish, 
and the rest; of Africa and the Eastern Islands where 



ADVENTUKE IN DOMESTIC INDUSTRIES 215 

spices grew, of slaughter houses and the canning of meats 
and vegetables, while grains of all kinds, fruits of all sea- 
sons, birds, every edible variety of meats, and even wines 
and beers, and all the rest, were texts of informal talks 
which he had carefully prepared for years that the chil- 
dren's appetites might be made apperception centers for 
all the botanical and zoological knowledge, and the accounts 
of processes and localities, that they could be made to con- 
tain. To this rather unique organization of his knowledge 
he was slowly adding a limited curriculum of cooking, and 
on this theme had accumulated several shelves full of books 
and choice recipes in clippings. 

Plain cooking he knew something of, and Thursday and 
Sunday afternoons, when the cook was out, he with his 
wife and children prepared the evening meal and kept 
alive the old, traditionary feeling of the hearth as the heart 
of the home. But there were many mysteries of this high 
art he could never master. Practice and study as he 
would, his wife excelled him here as much as he did the 
children, or as the cook excelled her. On the paternal 
farm, as a youth, he had learned to do many things, and 
as a student in the laboratory in Germany he had taken 
courses of lessons each of a shoemaker, plumber, glass 
blower, broom maker, and bookbinder, and he set type and 
carved wood a little. But with all his unique and chronic 
passion for learning to do new things, nowhere did he 
make closer acquaintance with more of his own limitations 
than in the domain of the kitchen, although he had for 
years been a culinary endeavorer. 

Of almost everything that the chambermaid, butler, and 
coachman knew, he was already past master, but house- 
cleaning was his pet foible. In this avocation for some 
two months every spring, he found just the physical exer- 
cise and mental diversion that seemed most of all helpful 
for both mind and body. Two or three hours a day sufficed. 



216 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

Beginning in his own study and arrayed in suitable attire, 
with every window open, each book was carefully dusted 
out of the window, two or three at a time, shelf by shelf; 
the books of each tier were removed, cleansed and re- 
turned, and as each section was finished, covered with a 
sheet well tucked in. Windows were washed, curtains 
taken down for cleansing and repair, and every picture 
overhauled and rehung. Incidentally, too, every book, 
pamphlet, paper, lecture, book note, letter file, and drawer 
was overhauled and arranged in order, sometimes according 
to a new scheme. "Wheelbarrow loads of literature were 
discarded and taken to the library or the cremation furnace 
in it, or to the second-hand bookstore, or to country 
friends ; to make room in advance for the accumulations of 
the following year. 

All this process meant also that everything was mentally 
inventoried, lost treasures found and relocated in their 
proper place, stray and scattered leaflets, manuscripts, let- 
ters, and clippings were sorted, fastened together, pigeon- 
holed in the desk, and like brought to like, to the great 
saving of time and energy throughout the year. This work 
no other could possibly accomplish, however carefully 
directed, without adding to the confusion. New and im- 
portant arrangements here where most of his working hours 
were spent gave also a unique and most exquisite pleasure, 
perhaps because it placed him in masterful command of all 
the resources in this plethoric room, full of the accumula- 
tion of years. Standing desk, low table, lounge, reclining 
chair, drop light, smoking stand and all its accouterments, 
rotary bookcase, cases of drawers for cards and for filing 
large envelopes, writing and reading chairs — everything 
was rearranged and many pretty labor-saving devices and 
conveniences gave a glow of happiness of a hitherto psycho- 
logically unclassified kind. Wliat was it? At any rate, all 
this brought him nearer to his work, made him more com- 



ADVENTURE IN DOMESTIC INDUSTRIES 217 

pletely master of all his resources, and restored actual 
touch with many things that were lapsing from his cog- 
nizance. It gave a clear and fresh feeling of increased 
efficiency, and made old things seem new. It was somewhat 
as if his very brain was undergoing reorganization and 
resanification. His thinking could now be more systematic 
and effective, and his whole intellectual nature felt tidied 
up, cleansed, and refreshed. 

Our ancestors, the cave dwellers, apparently never 
cleaned house, but let the debris of broken flint implements^ 
worn-out mortars and pestles and even garments accumu- 
late, to say nothing of bones, shells, and ashes, living on. 
top of it all for generations, and when the cave was full 
moving to another. I know old houses in which the in-^ 
mates inherit a similar propensity and are unable to dis- 
pose of disused and even broken, worn-out articles. Old 
papers, clothes, shoes, hats, letters, books, and furniture 
are carefully preserved, perhaps relegated to attic, lumber 
room, or closet, until all are bursting. ''Anything may 
come handy" and so it is carefully laid up and forgotten. 
Woe betide him or her who lays destructive hands upon it ! 
Households have been disrupted by this conservative in- 
stinct clashing with that to clean up. One estimable house- 
wife I knew fell into hysterics because in her absence an 
old chest full of rags, samples, remnants, envelopes, clip- 
pings, was sorted over and the worthless part burned on 
the dump by a husband who needed the chest, although she 
had not opened it for fourteen years. For a year after, 
everything she could not readily find she was sure had been 
destroyed in the great holocaust. 

Housecleaning should be an imaginary moving and, pain- 
ful as it often is to condemn old things hallowed by asso- 
ciations, to have once been strenuous in this matter often 
gives ''a peace that passeth understanding," probably 
somehow akin to the elimination of waste tissue by the 



218 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

agency of a too long neglected bath. To keep lengthening 
rows of old shoes, rubbers, trousers, coats, dresses, for 
years in the vague hope of needing them for some outing, 
or until just the right person to use them comes to the 
door, is a form of psychic slouchiness akin to letting the 
tailings of a mine block its entrance. Heirlooms and special 
keepsakes are different. Yet the moral of nature's lesson 
is iconoclastic. Man needs to molt most such things in 
order that his soul may grow, attain adequate detachment 
from the past and live more palpitatingly in the present. 
Nations with the longest and most elaborately recorded 
history, like modern Italy and Greece, are not better for 
that fact, if indeed they are not impaired by the burden of 
their memories. 

This may help, to some degree at least, to explain my 
friend's passion, amounting almost to a mania, for house- 
cleaning. Perhaps when he is older he will feel differently. 
But he lately declared that for nearly, though not quite, 
every old book, the substance of which he knew tolerably 
ivell, that he expropriated or destroyed, he felt an access 
of power to master the next new one upon the subject. 
Every old file of letters that he consigned to the waste 
T>asket, with some exceptions, to be sure, gave new exhilara- 
tion, because of the feeling that he would never have to 
look them over and decide their fate again, as he had so 
often done annually. The distribution of unmendable 
furniture relieved his mind of the faint but year-long 
prompting to get it repaired, for such a feeling of duty to 
invalided articles may become almost an obsession and per- 
Iiaps weaken the character, as good intentions too faint 
ever to prompt to action are said to do. 

Thus he or she who does not sometimes clean house with 
his or her own hands does not and cannot feel the full 
sense of ownership and possession of treasures. To be 
Teally loved, they must be touched, handled, moved, fur- 



ADVENTURE IN DOMESTIC INDUSTRIES 21^ 

bished, and the more work lavished upon them, the more 
they are not only sensed but loved and treasured. Thus 
the rich do not own their *' things"; they are simply stored 
with them and are ownerless. It is like the case of mothers 
who have borne but never nursed, fed, dressed, or other- 
wise tended their children, so that the latter are really 
orphaned, though living in plenty. It is moral slouchiness 
about psychic housekeeping, akin to senescence, which is 
caused by the accumulation and non-elimination of the 
waste products of decomposition, that lets useless things 
accumulate unduly; while, conversely, the drastic exercise 
of the spring function brings rejuvenation of spirits and 
makes and keeps us like young people who have not yet 
lived long enough to accumulate burdensome impedimenta. 
The proper exercise of this function is akin to a wholesome 
Cathartic for a victim of chronic constipation. 

I have not begun to do justice to my friend's ijractice 
or to his theories. If I rightly catch his drift, he is pene- 
trated with the conviction that woman is in danger of 
losing respect for, and interest in, some of her own most 
fundamental functions, and he desired to see at first hand 
whether these were all so loathsome. He finds most of 
them exhilarating and peculiarly hygienic. He is not con- 
ceited enough to think that his solitary example — and soli- 
tary enough it is — or his precept, when his book appears, 
will set her again upon her lost trail. He fears she is 
abandoning her glorious kingdom and that so set is her 
determination to follow man that she will return to her 
own only if he leads the way. He is able to find, experi- 
enced as he is in athletics and in varied industries and 
handicrafts, nothing quite so wholesome for body and soul 
as doing precisely what woman is now turning her back 
upon. He holds, too, that no housewife can possibly have 
washing, cooking, cleaning, etc., well done by servants un- 
less she has learned how to do, and actually done, these 



^20 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

things well herself, and that whether she be a millionaire 
or a professional married woman, helping her husband out- 
side the home to support his family. He would find and 
make in domesticity new centers for the education of girls 
and women, and he holds that it would not be less, but 
more, purely cultural than present methods. But, as a 
lady professor in his own college remarked, ' ' though he is a 
good fellow, he is a queer Dick, and the bats that have 
domesticated themselves in his belfry seem to be a new 
species, though they are probably harmless. ' ' 



A LEAP-YEAR ROlilANCE 

I 

A TRUE TALE OF WESTERN LIFE 
' * ^Tis a wonder, by your leave, she will be tamed so. ' ' 

Springtown City is a quiet little village that has grown 
up around a college for both sexes, which was founded by 
a vigorous religious sect, something less than half a century 
ago, in what was then the far West. It stands upon a 
gentle southern slope, from which, across a deep ravine or 
glen, can be seen a magnificent expanse of rich level bottom- 
land. 

Farther up, behind the town, in a grassy oak-opening, 
stands an immense but now somewhat dilapidated wooden 
hotel, which a rash speculator had built fifteen years before 
our story commences, over a large chalybeate spring. The 
glen, through which now flows a tiny stream, must once 
have been the bed of a mighty torrent, for it is more than 
half a mile wide, very deep, and cut with many a curve, 
quaint, tunneled arch, and dangerous pit-hole through the 
solid blue limestone rock. Indeed, one of the professors of 
the college had been for years, and despite some ridicule, 
patiently accumulating evidence for a pet theory of his, 
that the three central great lakes along our northern 
boundary once found a nearer outlet to the sea through 
this ravine, but that it had been for most of its length 
filled up by the debris of the glacial epoch, till the rising 
waters of the lakes were forced to seek out a new and higher 

221 



222 RECREATIONS OP A PSYCHOLOGIST 

channel, now caUed the Niagara, into Ontario and the St. 
Lawrence. 

Both college and town had been larger twenty-five years 
ago than now. Indeed, the claims of the former upon the 
patronage of the community had been at first so success- 
fully urged that more than a dozen ignorant heads of fam- 
ilies actually sold all they had, and came in canvas-topped 
prairie-wagons and encamped for weeks under the unfin- 
ished walls of the dormitories in the vague hope that some- 
how their dirty and unlettered youngsters were here to be 
trained up into lawyers, editors, statesmen, and perhaps 
presidents, by a new-fangled educational process which 
they did not pretend to understand. The town also had 
once given promise of speedy and unlimited growth. For 
a few years extravagant expectations of sudden wealth had 
attracted many capitalists, until, as the larger enterprises 
failed one after another, investments were withdrawn to 
more promising fields. 

Springtown City had now entered upon a second and 
more tranquil period of its history. A large portion of 
the population was still transient, settling here for a few 
months or years, on account of the extreme cheapness of 
Tent, for the education of children, or for health and recrea- 
tion. Half a dozen wealthy business men from a not far- 
distant city had established summer homes in or near the 
village. But the strangest thing about the place was that 
the influence and number of the unfair sex had been 
steadily decreasing until by the last census it was found 
that in the village proper the men were outnumbered 
almost three to one by the women. Widows left with 
slender incomes, anxious mammas who looked upon a 
college town as a cheap matrimonial bazaar, wives of 
business men who could spend only Sunday with their 
families, and a whole chorus of sharp-witted and often 
sharper-tongued maids, old and young, made up the society 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 223 

« 
and the sentiment of the town ; while for half a generation 

the younger and more ambitious men had sought compe- 
tency or professional renown in wider and more promising 
fields. 

In the college, too, the girls had gradually come to out- 
number and even outrank the boys, while their influence 
upon the latter grew more and more dominant. They had 
never been regarded with contempt as rivals, and from the 
first their presence, almost without their consciousness, had 
tended to repress many of the bad habits and licensed bar- 
barities of college life. But now a stolen moonlight ramble 
with a young lady classmate, or a picnic in the glen, was 
gradually becoming more attractive than a midnight raid 
on freshmen or a game of ball, until at last the robust boy- 
life of the American college, which, with all its abuses, 
seasons and straightens many a green and crooked stick, 
was almost forgotten. Even the faculty were obliged to 
admit that the collection of specimens in natural science 
was vastly facilitated by allowing the classes to pair off in 
their studies of flora and fauna. The boys sometimes wrote 
essays on domestic life, on ideal womanhood, and on the 
prominence given to the sentiment of love in the literatures 
of the world, and were fond of attending the Hypatia Club, 
where social and political themes were discussed by their 
young lady rivals, often with great sagacity and maturity. 
In all social gatherings where town and college met, men 
were at quite a premium. On Shakespeare evenings ladies 
sometimes had to assume the parts of Orlando, Ferdinand, 
and even Benedick and Petruchio. Two of them became 
quite acceptable as bass singers, and all took turns in 
dancing "gentleman" with white handkerchiefs tied about 
the right arm. In the weekly prayer-meetings at several 
of the churches, the most edifying exercises were usually 
led hj women. A few of the stronger-minded once walked 
to the polls, and vainly demanded the right to vote, and 



224 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

one of them afterward went so far as to allow her piano to 
be sold rather than to pay her taxes. Another, at a public 
anniversary, read a rather too scientific essay on tight- 
lacing, and another persisted for a year in wearing a reform 
costume. But, on the whole, despite some gossip-monger- 
ing, and now and then an eccentricity like the above, a 
wise spirit of moderation pervaded the place. Not a dram- 
shop was open there after the woman's crusade. Im- 
morality was repressed by a rigid social ostracism, while 
the whole moral atmosphere was kept singularly pure and 
bracing by an all-pervading censorship, sometimes as rigor- 
ous and outspoken as a woman's indignation, and some- 
times as subtle as feminine tact. 

• •••••• 

The beginning of our story takes us back to late one 
evening during the Christmas holidays in 1872. Mrs. El- 
more had opened the spacious double parlors of her summer 
home — in which she had been detained from her usual 
winter season at the hotel in the city, by the sickness of an 
only son — for the entertainment of the Springtown Liter- 
ary Club. The exercises, which consisted of a conversation 
on Dante's Vita Niiova, led by a young college professor, 
and a representation of scenes from As Yau Like It, had 
been unusually well attended and interesting. The guests 
had slowly taken their departure in a pelting storm of 
mingled snow and rain that had suddenly arisen since they 
had assembled. When the door had closed after the last 
good-night, Mrs. Elmore pushed a large easj^-chair before 
the grate, and, languidly seating herself, summoned the 
maid to bring a bottle of the choice cherry-wine she had 
put up with her own hands five years before. 

''And tell John," she added, ''to go to Mrs. Newell 's at 
once, and say that Miss Josephine will stay with me to- 
night." 

Mrs. Elmore was a tall, large woman, with a decidedly 



A LEAP-YEAR RO]\IANCB 225 

Roman cast of features, and of commanding, almost reginal 
manner, yet with a complexion as fresh as a girl of sixteen, 
and with eyes and lips full o^ tenderness and sensibility. 
She was the spoiled only daughter of a well-to-do lawyer, 
whose name had been quite prominent in the early political 
history of the State, the alternately teased and petted sister 
of three older brothers, and was now the wife of a rich 
old speculator, who had retired from business nearly a 
score of years before, when he married her, a girl of seven- 
teen. Always allowed to follow her own capricious and 
adventuresome will, she had acquired an unusually wide 
and varied experience as a woman of the world ; while her 
independent and original ways and views in all matters 
within her ken, domestic, social, and sometimes even liter- 
ary or political, to which it was her particular affectation 
to call attention, had made her the center of quite a salon 
of admirers. The ceaseless and exuberant flow of animal 
spirits which led her sometimes to make ludicrous the 
foibles of others by good-humored though rather too 
trenchant caricature, had sharpened the tongues of the 
village gossips against her; but, in spite of this, it was 
more than whispered that she was the trusted counselor of 
many a lovelorn lad and lass, who were somehow led to 
pour their secrets into her ear, and seek her sound, wo- 
manly advice. If this was so, she did her kindly offices 
silently, and kept her own counsels with perfect discretion. 
In short, she was by no means a vulgar backbiter or an 
intriguing matchmaker, whatever Mrs. Grundy might sur- 
mise. 

Before the maid returned, a young lady entered from 
behind the curtain of the temporary stage in the back- 
parlor, and seated herself on an ottoman with the air of 
a familiar and consciously welcome guest. She was dressed 
in the last hymeneal costume of Rosalind, and her face was 
still flushed from the excitement of the evening's per- 



226 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

formance. Yet, in spite of the hearty and well-merited 
applause she had received, there was no look of triumph 
upon her brow, but rather a trace of anxiety and even pain. 
Without noticing this, Mrs. Elmore began: 

''What foolish whim was it that made you try to give 
up your part at the very last moment? You look well in 
the costume of a page. The * mannish air,' the 'swashing 
martial outside,' become you admirably. You fit the de- 
scription of the character which is put into Oliver's mouth. 
You were just bom for a Rosalind, and she seems to me 
the very crown jewel of all Shakespeare's womanly crer 
ations — so delicate yet so resolute and independent, «o 
tender yet so noble. What ought a sensible girl of princely 
breeding, suddenly thrown upon her own resources, to do 
but find the man she loves, satisfy herself that her affection 
is returned, and then let him know she is ready? You 
had no such morbid scruples about the part when you were 
a coUegian ; for, if I remember aright, you had tried it be- 
fore, though with far less success. Still," she mused, **I 
am not surprised at all." 

"It is no such foolish pride as that," replied Miss 
Newell. "To be sure, I expected to feel more awkward in 
such a character at twenty-eight than I did at sixteen, 
though I felt far less so. But what saddens me more and 
more every day is the thought of Brother George's mar- 
riage in the spring. The old home, that I have kept for 
him ever since poor father's death, must be broken up. 
Our tastes were similar, we read and studied together 
through college, and I thought we should always live to- 
gether. I do not know what I shall do." 

Her voice trembled, and her eyes were filled with tears. 

"Nonsense! I thought you abhorred sentiment," said 
Mrs. Elmore. "Your brother ought to have married long 
ago, and you ought to be glad of a chance to get away 
from Springtown at last. A sister's love should never 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 227 

make her jealous of a wife^s. I have not been surprised 
at what I have seen in you to-night. The townsfolk who 
have known you longest, and have always complained of 
your cold, proud ways, were all struck with the warm, 
•loving manner in which you portrayed Rosalind's love. 
Your brother would have been astonished most of all had 
he seen you to-night." 

There was no reply, and Mrs. Elmore continued : 

"Now, Josie, I asked you to stay to-night, not because 
I am afraid to be alone in Mr. Elmore's absence, and not 
because I forget your strange love of walking in all kinds 
of bad weather, but because I have something very plain 
and particular to say to you. Professor Moors is in love 
with you. There! don't smile, and don't look so scornful 
about it. Poor fellow! It was really pitiful to see the 
timid glance he gave you as he was describing so earnestly 
Dante's growing, yet hopeless, passion. I was not sur- 
prised. I have long suspected it. Your snug little fortune 
makes you an heiress in his eyes, so that his pride, as well 
as his bookish, bashful, inexperienced ways, will always 
hinder any avowal. I doubt if he is himself as conscious 
of his affection as those who have observed him of late, and 
of course he would feel deeply mortified if he knew how 
conspicuously he had worn his heart on his sleeve to-night. 
He is a rough, undressed stone, fresh from the quarry. 
Carve away boldly, and you may find the perfect husband 
that I am sure lies concealed within." 

She watched her listener's face closely as she spoke, but 
could detect nothing but indifference. 

**And now," she continued, **I see plainly that I am 
called to give you a rather serious lecture. You are well, 
energetic, and practical, and therein much superior to the 
average woman. But this silent reserve of your manner 
repels what is absolutely necessary to every human being — 
friendship and love. Your heart has always been strangely 



228 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

solitary. It is dying of starvation. It asks affection, and 
you give it — books, science. Away with this foolish, cruel 
philosophy of life — this systematic repression of sentiment ! 
There is, to be sure, such a thing as a tender, almost attrac- 
tive melancholy, often seen in young and earnest souls. It 
is a common, perhaps a necessary, phase of growth. It 
comes of extravagant ambition, and is often the reaction 
of unrealizable ideals and hopeless love. And — oh, dear! 
— ^how common such cases are nowadays — in novels! But 
yours is a little less commonplace, at least in degree if not 
in kind, for mature years ought to bring, and generally do, 
a sound, stable contentment. If they do not, the end is— 
well — the worst thing that can come to a well-meaning 
woman — a lingering, decaying discontent, that stultifies 
and kills all that is best in her nature. Come, now — ^you 
know I admire your ambitions, if I do not approve the 
direction they have taken. I know you better than you do 
yourself, and love you far better than you love yourself, 
so do think about all this seriously." 

* ' Is that why you have kept me to-night ? ' ' replied Miss 
Newell, with some warmth. *'I have always liked that 
little homily of yours, and it has never impressed me more 
than now ; and so let me say, once for all, I have no thought 
of marrying. I have put it entirely out of my plans. I 
have no wish to hsilve my rights and double my duties. 
The very best women nowadays are unmarried. The flirts 
and the drudges find husbands easily enough — the silliest 
first, for that matter. Men love sentimentality, and affecta- 
tion they take as a superfine form of compliment. I am 
old enough, too, to see woman 's wrongs, which I pity, while 
I despise her weaknesses. As to the townspeople, you know 
I never care for their senseless gossip, and with Professor 
Moors I have scarcely more than a bowing acquaintance.'* 

Yet, as she spoke, her color heightened. 

**I have often half suspected your sincerity in these 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 229 

views/' said Mrs. Elmore, ''and I am not surprised at 
what I see. Your very demonstrativeness in stating such 
theories assures me that — unconsciously, perhaps — you are 
trying to preach down your own heart, and that is as vain 
and senseless as trying to mortify the flesh in a cloister. 
It is the supreme duty of every sensible and well-bred 
young woman to use every honorable means that God and 
Nature have put into her hands to get herself safely and 
happily married; and what is one woman's friendship 
worth to another save to render wise aid in advancing this 
great end ? It would be a funny thing, ' ' she added, with a 
loud, merry laugh, ''if a loving couple who met almost 
daily should die of 'concealment like a worm i' the bud' — 
he too bashful to tell his love, she shouting 'Excelsior' to 
the last to drown the softer accents of her own heart. ' ' 

"When you have told Professor Moors your suspicions 
about me, if you have not already done so, your duty will 
be ended. Much joy may you find in your bootless task!" 
said Miss Newell, rising, and now thoroughly angry. 

"Well, I am not at all surprised. You are tired now, 
but sometime you will do me justice. By the way, I 
wanted to ask you to spend a few weeks with me in the 
city next month. You were never properly introduced 
into society, you know." 

"Oh, I understand," said Miss Newell. "You think 
that now I am to be alone in the world I need a little of 
your wise advertising and bargaining to save me from a 
forlorn old-maidhood. So kind of you! But I tell you 
I hate the dependence of married life. The helpless con- 
dition and the narrow, shallow life of most married women 
is the most pathetic thing in the whole wide world to me. 
I will show people that one woman at least has sense 
enough to take care of herself. Whatever else I was made 
to do in the world I was not made to smirk, and simper, 



230 EECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

and blush, under the stare of every brainless, impudent 
beau. ' ' 

**I am not surprised, my dear, at your feelings," said 
Mrs. Elmore, ^'but you need rest now — so good-night. 
Mary will show you to your room.'* 

**No, I am not at all surprised," she soliloquized, after 
her guest had retired. ''Poor girl! she knows she has be- 
trayed her secret to me. Her pride will make her avoid 
me. Her heart will have a long and lonely conflict with 
her ambition, and we may well be anxious about the result. 
I shall not be surprised, however it may end. It is such a 
satisfaction to foresee things ! ' ' and she looked abstractedly 
through the bottom of her empty wineglass at the dying 
fire till she realized that she was both sleepy and chilly. 

Early in the morning she was awakened by a gentle tap 
at her door, and Miss Newell's voice: *' Don't get up; I 
must go home before 'breakfast, and I only wanted you to 
lend me a book." 

''Certainly; anything," said Mrs. Elmore. 

*'I did not mean to be rude last night. Do forget it." 

'*0f course. I told you I was not surprised under the 
circumstances," replied Mrs. Elmore, trying to rouse her- 
self. 

On going downstairs an hour later she looked over the 
shelves of her library, and could not help smiling and mur- 
muring to herself, ''I am not surprised," as she noticed 
that the Vita Nuova was missing. 

It was very lonely at Miss Newell's during the week 
while her brother was away. The only inmates of the 
large, old-fashioned house besides herself were an invalid 
mother, a little brother, and two servants. After break- 
fast, and when the day's marketing had been done. Miss 
Newell retired to her own room. It was one she had occu- 
pied alone from her girlhood, and it was filled with the 
relics of many a girlish enthusiasm. There was a small 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 231 

case of geological specimens, a well-prepared herbarium, tha 
skeleton of a cat she had dissected, and several birds 
stuffed by her own hands in her college days. The walls 
were covered with portraits of all styles and sizes, of what 
she poetically called the heroines of the ages, and which 
she had been at great pains and much expense to collect. 
All types of womanhood, historic and fictitious, from 
Minerva to Mrs. Somerville, from Kriemhild and Trojan 
Helen to Florence Nightingale and George Eliot, were 
grouped on the walls with evident care, but upon a prin- 
ciple not obvious to any but herself. They were framed^ 
too, in every conceivable way, and not according to the 
value or style of the picture, but evidently according to 
some sense of poetic fitness. Some were deeply matted in 
gilt and velvet, and some only bordered by varnished burs, 
spruce-cones, and oak-leaves, and some were framed in 
spatter-work or plain white paper curiously folded and 
cut. A large and well-selected library occupied one side 
of the room, in which historical works seemed to predom- 
inate, and all the furniture was rich, but plain and worn. 
Miss Newell seated herself before the small coal-stove,, 
and was soon absorbed in the book she had borrowed. As 
she read the passionate sonnets she tried to trace the maze 
of fact and allegory in their mystic lines, crammed as full 
of meaning as a cabalistic text. She saw how the poet's 
ambition was fired, and his soul expanded and tempered 
by the heat of love into genius — a love which, perhaps, she 
who was its object never suspected. She recalled how the 
young professor had, the evening before, contrasted the 
purity of Dante's passion with the pagan love described 
by Tibullus and Apuleius, and the half-sentimental, half- 
sensuous love of knight-errantry, and the poet's noble 
frankness with the vanity of Rousseau, and his willing 
docility to the teachings of affliction with the long heart- 
martyrdoms of asceticism, until at last, wearied and di& 



232 RECREATIONS OP A PSYCHOLOGIST 

satisfied, she threw down the book, put on her shawl, and 
set out upon her solitary daily walk. 

The weather had grown colder in the night, the wind 
was biting, and the walks were slippery. But the usual 
two miles were faithfully done. As she returned past the 
college the hour-bell was ringing, and she turned her steps, 
as she was quite in the habit of doing, toward one of the 
lecture-rooms where all resident graduates were allowed 
to attend whenever they chose. She had often visited Pro- 
fessor Moors 's room, but she lingered in the hall till the 
students had all taken their places. It required a slight 
effort to enter, and she hardly knew whether she was more 
relieved or disappointed to find that the wizen-faced Dr. 
Skinner had been assigned this room, and with his hard, 
dry sentences and crispy German accent, was beginning a 
lecture on philosophy. She tried to understand something 
about tlie absolute spirit, and pure thought, and divine 
archetypal intuitions, but the desolate snowscape which 
she saw through the window was more interesting. Just 
before the close of the hour, however, her attention was 
arrested by a transition in the lecture. 

' ' We come now, ' ' said the professor, ' * to Schleiermacher, 
whose position is in many respects the exact opposite of 
the pure, dry intellectuality of Hegel. The former be- 
lieved that feeling, not thought, is the absolute; that 
growth in the consciousness of dependence, not independ- 
ence, is the true measure of human progress; that enthu- 
siasm is better than reasoning or science; that it is deli- 
cacy and intensity of feeling that make genius in the 
artist, conscience in the reformer, faith in the devotee, and 
the truest nobility in man, and especially in woman. The 
highest and absolute form of feeling is a sense of depend- 
ence upon something that is above us. His pupil, Neander, 
summarized his system of religious doctrine in the phrase 
*The heart makes the theologian.' There is no such type 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 233 

of the true relation of the Church through all its member- 
ship to Christ as pure wifely love.'' 

Miss Newell had listened to the same words six years 
before, but they had made no impression upon her. With- 
out thinking deeply on what she had heard and read that 
morning, she went home with a vague, half -serious thought 
that Providence had somehow conspired with Mrs. Elmore 
to alter the course of life she had marked out for herself, 
but this she vowed with the greatest earnestness they 
should never do. This impression was not lessened when, 
on entering the dining-room, she found a formal invitation 
for herself and brother to attend the usual New Year's 
reception in the college parlors, where she knew she should 
meet Professor Moors, with whom she had not spoken since 
his return from the summer vacation. 

When the evening came, Miss Newell found herself in- 
stinctively avoiding the young professor. Their eyes met 
once or twice during the evening, but toward its close they 
suddenly found themselves face to face. 

**It is singular," he said, ''how we escape each other. 
This is the third evening I have lately spent where you 
were, but we have not met since last commencement. ' ' 

Confused to feel that in spite of herself her manner was 
never more frigid. Miss Newell could only say: 

* * I hope your summer was pleasantly passed. You were 
in Maine, I think?" 

**Yes," he replied. **The lonesome life I lead here has 
made me enjoy my home-visits more than ever before. 
What a wonderful place this is for work — so quiet and so 
healthful ! But when one feels the need of rest and recrea- 
tion, then the trouble begins. One asks one after another 
of his friends to walk, finds them always preoccupied, and 
then has to force himself to go stupidly and lonesomely 
without company. One may drum on his piano when he is 
sick of work, but if he studies new pieces it is work again. 



234 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

There is no one to play whist, or even chess. If one could 
work here all the time, he would not get pessimistic. As 
it is, I confess I do sometimes/' 

' ' Happy at work, and miserable when play-time comes ! ' ' 
said Miss Newell, now almost surprised at her own anima- 
tion. ''Then I ought to wish you a most laborious life. 
Probably you have eaten so much of the fruit of the tree 
of knowledge that you are divinely sentenced to greater 
toil than most of us." 

"No," replied he, very gravely. "That is the root of 
most of the gloomy philosophy so alarmingly prevalent 
nowadays. Sound knowledge never brings unhappiness. 
The fall was a yet more supreme blessing to the race than 
Jesus himself brought. I have always told my classes that 

* Faust' and all that sort of works are immoral because 
they dispute the fact that the human mind was designed 
to seek the "unattainable, like a ship built for the sea and 
not the harbor, with many sails and but one anchor. Those 
who have really tasl;ed the fruit of the tree of knowledge 
have come to know that on the whole, as things are, the 
most toilsome life is the healthiest, happiest, most success- 
ful — in short, the best and fullest, however measured." 

"I have vaguely felt that myself, and I am grateful to 
you for saying it so distinctly, ' ' said Miss Newell, heartily. 

* * But yet it is so different with me ! I say to myself every 
day, I must work harder, though I have nothing more 
definite to work for than self-culture. And now when I 
am about to break up my dull home-life here, and have 
nothing to care for but my own culture, I am very sad, 
and begin to realize how happy I Juxfve been." 

"Yours is a rare good fortune," said the professor, 
"when contrasted with the dreadful drudgery of a teach- 
er's life, for I confess I should give up my theory if I had 
no higher ideal of work than even I am able to put into 
practice. ' ' 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 235 

*^You think teaching so hard, then?" she asked. 

**No one who has not tried it,'* replied the professor, 
"can imagine the petty vexations, the earking cares, the 
lifeless routine, and the abjectness of spirit, which it is 
impossible for even the best entirely to escape. ' ' 

**Then what do you think,'' she added, quickly, **of the 
condition of so many women who prefer the lowest grade 
of it, at starvation prices, to the many other things that a 
woman may do ? " 

' ' They do not enter upon it as a life 's work, ' ' he replied, 
**but only as a makeshift, till marriage or sometning else 
comes to them. Of course, they do not enjoy it. Women 
need a congenial and all-absorbing 'task for a life-pre- 
server' as much as men," he continued, speaking now more 
and more earnestly and disconnectedly, as he felt himself 
borne along on a new and more dangerous hobby of his. 
**And that is the whole of woman's rights? Look at it! 
The women will have to answer for a large share of the 
disorders of modem society. They must be fashionable, 
though their children are neglected and their husbands 
become mere money-hunters, or perhaps thieves. Half of 
them would rather live in an expensive hotel than be mis- 
tress of the best of homes. * Anything but domestic life,' 
is the cry. They will teach, preach, stand behind counters, 
set type, write books, and what not, all at half prices, rather 
than rescue the kitchen and the nursery from foreign in- 
competency. Most of them, too, are invalids nowadays, no 
more fit to marry than they are to compete with men in 
active life, and so they are selfish, morbidly excitable, yet 
often strangely unfeeling, never satisfied — in short, have 
all the symptoms of mental and physical invalidism. Look 
at our young lady students. There is not one of them, 
however much she might want to marry, who would not 
feel a little humiliated afterward to be found washing 
dishes or making bread, and all her old mates would pity 



236 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

her, and think her education was, of course, a dead loss. 
And yet, no one thinks it particularly hard for a young 
lawyer, however superior his training, to begin his pro- 
fession as the counsel of a drunken Irishwoman or a hog- 
thief, or for a young doctor to work half a day in trying 
to set one of the broken metatarsal bones of a dirty negro 's 
foot. Three quarters of the happiness of the human race 
ought to be domestic, and would be, if our wrong-headed 
women had developed instead of turned their backs upon 
that good old Anglo-Saxon home-life, which is the best 
character-school, the best source of high motive power, the 
most purifying and refining influence in the whole world. ' ' 

The professor was speaking with great earnestness, and 
would have said more, had he not noticed with real alarm 
the rigid pallor of his listener's face. Before he could 
express his concern, however, she was speaking very 
rapidly : 

*^Tou have made me listen to the most cruel, yes, insult- 
ing words I can conceive of! Women have always been 
victims of man's selfishness and tyranny, but not often in 
the worst days of such ungallant, rankling, wholesale con- 
demnation. Have you studied all the abuse of woman's 
worst enemies, to vent it upon me? I have heard of such 
ideas, but never supposed before that they were sincerely 
held, much less that I should ever listen toN^^^ir avowal by 
a man of intelligence. Most of your notions are as false 
as they are outgrown. If woman is feeble, man made her 
so. If she is vain, it is because man has condemned her to 
a shallow life. If she hates the domestic circle, it is be- 
cause she has always been made a slave there. But she is 
and does none of these. She is longing for a fuller, higher 
life, with all the strength of her nature. She may seem at 
times unfeeling, but it is because she longs so sternly to 
know, be, and do, more in the world ; and man, instead of 
helping her to realize her aspirations, thrusts his hard, 



A LBAP-YEAE ROMANCE 237 

cold fist in her face when she attempts to rise. Sir, you 
are most unjust and unfeeling.'' 

Passionately as she spoke, her face had now almost a 
beseeching look, and she stood with her haads clasped and 
her eyes cast down. 

'If I am so heartless, I can doubtless do nothing more 
agreeable than to leave you,'' said Professor Moors, as he 
turned away to chat gayly with a group of lady students 
till the party dispersed. 

Two weeks passed. Professor Moors had met Miss Newell 
several times on the street, but her bows had been so very 
distant that he was not a little surprised to find one morn- 
ing among his letters an invitation, written in a clear, bold 
hand, to attend a tea-party at her home, to which was 
added a request that he would mark out for her and bring 
with him a short course of reading in romantic fiction. 
She had from principle read very little in that direction, 
the note went on to state, so that the commonest stories 
would probably be new to her. Professor Moors prepared, 
with much care, a short list of representative novels, such 
as could be found in the college library, and such as he 
fancied would benefit and perhaps please her most. It did 
not occur to him until he afterward glanced over the list 
that the characters most prominently portrayed in every 
work he had selected were women, as Romola, Annele, 
Irma, Lucille, etc., who had been humbled and at last 
sweetened and regenerated by long and painful tribulation. 
It was a curious circumstance; he would mention it to 
Miss Newell. When the evening came, notwithstanding his 
early arrival, he was somewhat disappointed to find the 
large old parlors already quite full of guests. On entering, 
Miss Newell received him in a cold and, as he was a trifle 
piqued to fancy, condescending manner, and turned imme- 
diately away to other comers, and it was in vain that he 
sought to meet her again. Soon a lap-tea was served, and 



238 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

he found himself seated between a substantial old shop- 
keeper and his wife, where he could not help listening to 
the harsh voice of Miss NewelT's grandmother, who had 
come up from the city with one of her daughters for a 
week's visit. The old lady was a little hard of hearing, 
and was speaking in a correspondingly loud voice to Mrs. 
Elmore. 

"What upon airth! You don't say so? Ef I could 
b'lieve it, I should feel middlin' kind o' streaked about it 
myself. But it just can't be. Why, bless yer, when she 
was in pantalettes, she was a 'ready the pertest, sassiest lit- 
tle minx ye ever seed, and so chuck full o' grit that her big 
brother darsent pester her. When she got put out she 
wouldn't go round tewin' and takin' on, but she'd just 
spunk right up to the biggest on 'em. Her gran 'ther used 
to say, says he, * Won't she wear the britches when she 
gets married, though? Won't her man hev to stan' round 
lively ef her dander gets up ? I tell you, Beckey, ' he used 
to say, 'ef he don't jest toe the line to a dotted t, she'll 
skin the poor coot. I kin see her now/ says he, *a-deaconin' 
and a-readin' it off to him.' 

*' 'Well,' says I, 'there's one thing — she won't fret her 
gizzard clean out of her ef she don't git married, as some 
gals I knows on, and that is some comfort, anyhow.' 

** 'All right, Becky,* says he, 'but sich gals ez Josie, 
they'll either marry some shiftless scaly gump that comes 
gallivantin' an' honeyfuglin' round 'em, that they don't 
really care a bung-town for, 'cause they don't want ter be 
old maids, and 'cause they want a man to boss 'round ; or 
else they'll get on a new bent, and come and knuckle all 
under to some strappin', big, bullyin' feller, who'll tame 
'em down like a cosset-lamb.' 

" 'Well, then,' thinks I, 'she'd best lay out to git along 
without marryin'.' And so I told her father afore he 
died j and when a gal gits to be twenty-eight and can bait 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 239 

her hook with such a fortune as Josie, and hain't had any 
bite, she'd better stop fishin'." 

Mrs. Elmore said nothing, and the old lady remarking 
that she was ''clean tuckered out/' and solacing herself 
with a pinch of snuff, went upstairs to bed, and the com- 
pany heard a few blasts as from a distant foghorn, as she 
struck the keynote of the nasal music that usually soothed 
her slumbers. 

The professor had no opportunity to speak with Miss 
Newell till her guests were taking their departure. Then 
he handed her the list of books without a word of explana- 
tion, as he bade her good-night. 

Exactly at the end of another fortnight he found an- 
other note upon the desk of his recitation room, placed 
there, perhaps, to escape the all-seeing eyes of the gossipy 
postmistress : 

**Miss NewelPs compliments to Professor Moors. Would lie be 
so kind as to allow her to be the companion of one of his ^stupid, 
lonesome' walks? She wishes to say something particular to him. 
She will be at home after ten o'clock every day this week." 

The professor waited several days, and it was not till 
late Saturday afternoon that he rang Miss Newell 's door- 
bell. She answered it herself, and left him standing for 
a moment in the hall, while she made ready to accompany 
him. As they started out, he almost fancied he heard Mrs. 
Elmore's merry laugh within. He might have been mis- 
taken. They walked rapidly. Each repeatedly accused the 
other of trying to keep ahead. Then they would slacken 
their pace for a moment, but it was sure to accelerate again 
till one or the other proposed to go slower. On and on 
they walked along the icy glenroad, till the sun went down, 
and the bright, early stars of a midwinter night came out. 

*'"We will turn back. Miss Newell, whenever you wish," 
he had said, repeatedly, and she had always answered: 



240 BECRBATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

'*I am not at all tired. Walk just as far as you would 
without me/' 

By following the glen round a curve of several miles, 
they could reach home by an unfrequented road over the 
hill past the spring and the old hotel, without any sudden 
turn about, and this course they both at last seemed re- 
solved upon. Their talk was mainly of objects by the way, 
the club, and other indifferent topics. Each felt that the 
other was slightly constrained and uninteresting, though 
the conversation was not allowed to flag for an instant: 
As they were entering the village, Miss Newell suddenly 
asked : 

** Why did you choose for me only stories of proud women 
becoming broken-hearted ? ' ' 

**It was purely accidental/' he said quickly. *'I did 
not notice it till it was too late, or I would have changed 
the list. I found no chance to speak of it that evening. ' ' 

*'You surely do not go so far," asked she, **as to think 
that women need to be schooled by such terrible experi- 
ence, to teach them a proper sense of their dependence? 
You have not pointed me to your ideal of woman's life?" 

'*By no means," he replied. 

**I should prefer to know more about the ideal men of 
romance," she said, *'so I have asked Mrs. Elmore to select 
some reading for me. I want more action. I admire force, 
energy. That is why I like Carlyle. I am coming to be- 
lieve in work, perhaps, as much as you. But purely ^seden- 
tary, mental work would be duU to me, I fear. Do you 
not feel it so?" 

'*I do not find it dull, though, of course, it is often ex- 
hausting," he replied. 

They had reached Miss Newell 's gate now, and, late as it 
was, and supperless as they both were, she paused and 
said: 

**You spoke of being lonesome, and well you might. 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 241 

shut up in that desolate room of yours. I know how to 
pity any one who suffers so, and have often felt, too, that 
you were distressed by some private grief or misfortune. 
Concealed sorrow, you know, sickens and kills. You need 
a confidant and an adviser. As the latter, please let me 
say, look to your health. Do not work so hard. Be out- 
of-doors more. I should be very glad to walk again — to 
play whist with you some night ; still more, to hear any of 
your music. ' ' 

She spoke very firmly and deliberately, and still lin- 
gered. 

The professor tried to conceal his confusion, and could 
only reply : 

*'I shall be happy to call again, but it iS so late I must 
really bid you good-night now. ' ' 

She turned away suddenly, and the professor heard the 
gate close with great force as he walked off rapidly toward 
his room. 

Weeks passed again. Miss Newell 's grandmother had 
taken her departure, and Mrs. Elmore, who was almost her 
only intimate friend, had gone to the city. Her brother's 
wedding had just been celebrated, but Miss Newell still re- 
mained in Springtown. The professor, perhaps, did not 
realize how lonely she felt; at any rate he did not call. 
The first of April came, and with it another note in a hand 
that he did not recognize. It was written with a pencil, 
was slightly soiled and crumpled, and many words and 
phrases were underscored. It read as follows: 

My dear Professor Moors: 

I trust and respect you so much that I venture to write what 
perhaps no woman ever wrote to a man, and my only excuse is that 
I believe no such circumstances ever existed before. I love you more 
and more every day in spite of myself. What can I do except to say, 
as Rosalind told poor Orlando, "I am yours if you will marry me." 
You need a wife and a home. Perhaps it is for me to say, first, 
that any differences which may exist in our circumstances should not 
be a barrier to our love. 

If your heart does not tell you who wrote this, know that it is 



242 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

from one who would celebrate leap-year day, which is also her birth- 
day, in a way as rare as that event. In great suspense, 

Devotedly yours, 
Alpha. 

P. S. — Please destroy this note. I have now carried it a month 
without daring to send it. 

The professor read the note again and again. He could 
not think it a joke, though received upon All Fools' day, 
and his suspicions at once pointed to the true source of it. 
He attempted no reply for several days, while his students 
found occasion for some amusement in his fits of abstraction 
in the classroom, and some of the bolder ones ventured to 
give incoherent answers, while he gazed out of the window, 
till a suppressed burst of merriment would recall his 
thoughts to the work in hand. 

The class in Chaucer became uncontrollable, and he quite 
lost his temper, when one day he said to a young lady stu- 
dent: '* Please begin — 

'When that Aprille with his shoures soot« 

The drought of March hath pereed to the roote,' 

and scan the first twenty lines, Miss — Newell. ' ' 

Within the next week he wrote, and afterward destroyed, 
many replies, until at last the following was written, and, 
a few days later, sent : 

My Good Friend Miss Newell: 

I received on April 1st an anonymous note, which I believe to have 
been from you, and the contents of which I believe to be as sincerely 
meant as they were frankly spoken. I need scarcely say that your 
confidence shall be forever sacredly kept. But I ought now, by every 
consideration, to be no less plain in reply. If I have in any way 
become an object of your pity, I have at least never sought to win 
your love, nor consciously given you any right to fancy that I loved 
you. But whatever my feelings may be, I am compelled to believe 
that the love you express is too selfish and shallow, as it is evidently 
too sudden, to sanction the great experiment of life. You are candid 
enough to say I need a wife. I do feel more deeply day by day the 
need of companionship and sympathy in my own lines of interest — 
in fine, of a true helpmeet. But my ideal of wedlock is, I hope, so 
high that I never should dare to propose marriage from such or any 
other motives of convenience or necessity. I will venture only to 



A LEAP-YEAE ROMANCE 243 

remind you that there are thousands in the world who would eagerly 
seek what I am and always shall be so very old-fashioned as to 
refuse — wives who prefer to adorn social or public life rather than 
the domestic circle, and who bring to it pride and wealth rather than 
true and tender love, which alone can give happy and sweet-tempered 
content and satisfaction to the humblest home. 

Yours truly and sincerely, 
Omega. 

Miss Neweirs daily walks had become very irregular 
during the dreary days of real suspense before she received 
this letter; sometimes they were omitted, and, when taken, 
were over unfrequented roads or during the hours when 
she knew the professor would be engaged at the college. 
When it came at last, she hastened to lock herself into her 
room, unheated though it chanced to be, before she opened 
it, and even then she paused, looked toward all the corners 
of the room, listened till she could hear her own heart beat, 
then took it from the envelope and resolutely tried to calm 
herself as she turned it over in her hand and walked to 
and fro. At last she spread it out upon the standing-desk 
where she generally studied, and read it carefully, sentence 
by sentence, trying to catch the full import of every clause 
as she proceeded. When she had done, and as she was 
slowly and mechanically folding it, she caught a glimpse of 
her own face in the mirror which had always hung before 
the desk. The cheeks of the image she saw there were so 
blanched, the lips so firmly compressed, the brow so rigid, 
the face so hard and stem, that she started back with sud- 
den dismay at a visage so old and haggard. The air seemed 
to grow close, and there was such a heaviness now at her 
heart that she staggered, clutching wildly at the nearest 
support, and bringing down the case of geological speci- 
mens — stones, skeleton, and all — ^bruising herself severely 
by falling upon them. She did not faint, but before she 
could rise both her servants were knocking at the door in 
great alarm to know what had happened. She left them 
to collect the treasures whfch hitherto no hand but her own 



244 KECRBATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

had been allowed to touch, and arrayed herself, scarcely 
knowing what she did, and started out for a walk. 

She had not gone so f^r since the long walk with the 
professor, and tea was waiting when she returned. Her 
little brother had already climbed into his chair and was 
waiting very impatiently. He checked his clamor suddenly 
when she appeared, looking long and earnestly in her face, 
tried to steady his manly little lip and keep back the rising 
tears, but soon began to cry aloud. "Josie don't care for 
little brother, or she would not walk so far off, and look so 
tired and so sorry/' was the only articulate form of his 
grief. 

**Yes, Josie does love little brother, and will make him 
happy," she said, impulsively clasping him in her arms 
and finding relief at last in mingling her tears with his. 
**But Josie is all alone now, and little brother must love 
her, too.'' 

The little fellow was greatly astonished at this sudden 
burst of tenderness, and still more so when his sister did 
not call Kate, as was her wont, but took him up to bed her- 
self and sat at his bedside till he fell asleep. 

Sunday came, and again Miss Newell found herself lis- 
tening to the crispy accents of the German professor, whose 
turn it chanced to be to officiate in the college chapel. He 
was so skeptical, and withal so dry and philosophical, that 
he was far from popular. But for once he had left his too 
critical methods, and chosen a large, sjrmpathetic theme. 
He spoke of the corn of wheat falling into the ground and 
dying that it might bring forth much fruit, and of the 
blessings that attended self-sacrifice. 

^'We are seldom called upon," the speaker said, ^*to die 
for a good cause as thousands have been in the past. Ours 
is the harder duty of living daily and hourly for those ob- 
jects which are dearer than life. The Christ of our day 
would have toiled to the weary end of a long life. When 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 245 

the heart and the mind have once made the great surrender 
to those objects which are higher and larger and more 
glorious than they, there comes a sweetness, a strength, 
and a light, unknown before. To live for self is suicide of 
all that is best in us. Look at the faith of one fourth of the 
whole race, that annihilation, absolute and complete, is the 
supreme good to be always toiled and prayed for. For 
them, this hidden secret sense, that urges them to 'some 
unknown good,' is strong enough to be followed against 
the current of every other known motive, wealth, fame, 
power, or happiness, here or hereafter. The great lesson 
is, that man's use to men is all, his credit with them noth- 
ing.'' 

Miss Newell followed the speaker intently. As she 
walked slowly home she felt in her breast a sentiment of 
restfulness and peace, that had been a stranger there for 
many a day, and which so transfused her very slumbers 
that night that she awoke in the morning with a strong 
sense that something unremembered had just faded from 
her soul too transcendently sweet to be ever thought or 
felt again, and some days passed before the old bitterness 
gradually began to return. 

Meanwhile the professor had been expecting an angry 
reply, but two weeks passed and he heard nothing. At 
length he learned that Miss Newell had gone to the city 
very soon after the date of his note. ''She is with Mrs.- 
Elmore," he said to himself, "and will, doubtless, find in 
her circle suitors more to her mind, who will gladly fall 
at her feet and offer far higher and more congenial stations 
than I can ever hope for. She is likely enough already 
ashamed of her flitting interest in me, associated as it was 
with an ill-judged avowal, which must, upon mature reflec- 
tion, injure her self-respect as deeply as my perhaps too 
harsh reply must have humiliated her pride. The village 
gossips, then, are right. Mrs. Elmore is an intriguing, mer- 



246 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

cenary matchmaker, who has acquired a morbid, ahnost in- 
sane, passion for trafficking in affection, and Miss Newell 
is heartless enough deliberately to place herself in such 
hands, because the time has come when she feels the need 
of a home.'* 

"With such thoughts the professor applied himself with 
renewed energy to the work of his chosen field, while spring 
passed and the busy season of commencement came on 
apace. Mrs. Elmore had now returned alone to her sum- 
mer home, while Miss Newell's house still remained closed 
and billeted ''For sale." 

One day, in glancing over the morning papers in the col- 
lege reading-room. Professor Moors noticed the following 
advertisement : 

**Miss Josephine Newell's Collegiate Institute for Young Ladies 
•will be opened in the fall on the completion of the new buildings, 
to all who pass the required examination. A full corps of competent 
instructors has been engaged, who will arrange a new advanced and 
thorough course. Many special city privileges have been secured 
for the pupils, and the endowment is such that free tuition is offered 
for the first year. The patronage of all who desire a higher culture 
for women is respectfully solicited.'' 

His interest was at once so strongly aroused by what he 
read that he hastily determined, though not without many 
misgivings, to call on Mrs. Elmore and learn more about it. 
As he waited in her parlor lie reflected that he must be 
wary and not rouse any suspicion by displaying more than 
an educator 's interest in a new scheme. He would bring it 
in incidentally. Besides, if she suspected any curiosity on 
his part, it would be like her to refuse to gratify it. 

But such thoughts were cut short as she entered the room 
and began abruptly: **What have you Springtown people 
been doing to drive Miss Newell away? I left her re- 
markably happy and contented, and on my return I find 
that she has fled away as if in a panic, without a single 
adieu to her friends here, and has embarked all her prop- 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 8^ 

erty in a new-fangled educational scheme. I always thonght 
she had too level a business head to run any such risk, I 
must find out more about it.'' 

**You have not seen her, then, in the city?" he asked. 

*'No, indeed!" she replied. **I heard of her enterprise, 
but she did not call, and, of course, I could not run after 
her." 

* * I suppose she will make a veritable Lady Psyche or an 
Ida, ' ' said the professor, who, although he felt that he was 
being watched, could not repress a slight inflection of con- 
tempt. 

**That can hardly be known till some admirer has cour- 
age enough to woo her," said Mrs. Elmore, so innocently 
that Professor Moors felt that his curiosity had not be- 
trayed him, and he might further indulge with safety. 

* * I do not think, ' ' she added, very gravely, ' ' that she will 
ever become a regular man-hater. She has too much senti- 
ment and sense. Besides, she has chosen for herself the 
department of romantic fiction ! She says, I am told, that 
her school is designed to make women first, ladies after- 
ward. ' ' 

''But," he asked, **you do not think she can succeed 
\vith her new method, and quite without experience, too?" 

**I think she will use up all her substance and die in 
the attempt rather than fail," said Mrs. Elmore, warmly. 
*'You do not know her. "When she has once set her mind 
upon an object, obstacles seem only to rouse her into new 
action. Perseverance is the chief trait of her character. 
So no measure of success would surprise me." 

**The higher education of woman," said the professor, 
abstractedly, "is certainly an object worthy the devotion 
of the wisest and best, but she will need to husband all her 
resources to effect any reforms in the direction I presume 
she intends." 

**She will learn lessons of more value than any she will 



248 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

be able to teach others, ' ' Mrs. Elmore replied. * ' I think she 
will be changed herself in her work far more than she will 
change the inveterate prejudices she must encounter where 
Bhe is. ' ' 

The professor was heartily glad to find himself so far 
mistaken in his judgment of Miss Newell, and now could 
not avoid a vague suspicion of a possible cause for her 
sudden enterprise which he did not allow himself to en- 
tertain, and reproached himself for even fancying. 

A year passed away, and brought to Professor Moors all 
•the weary, uneventful round of duties which fill up a 
teacher's life so often with only faint-heartedness and 
petty, oppressive care. But he succeeded at last, with a 
purer ambition and a more resolute will than ever before, 
in so absorbing himself in the work of his chosen field 
that a fresh and generous enthusiasm, hitherto unfelt, was 
opening new sources of conscious power and enjoyment. 
He became more and more firmly wedded to his daily tasks. 
His teaching was so successful, and the recognition of his 
contributions to his chosen department was so general and 
hearty, and his judgment on all educational matters so 
mature and well informed, that the trustees at their annual 
meeting, though not without much opposition from the 
older members of the board on account of his youth, at last 
voted to confer on him the newly-vacated position of vice- 
president, which, on account of the age and infirmity of 
the president, was the virtual head of the college. 

Meanwhile, with her helpless mother and little brother, 
Miss Newell had taken up her abode in the bustling little 
city of Ashton, near to the scene of her newly-chosen labors. 
Here her crotchety, petulant old grandmother had for 
years dwelt alone in her own house with her servants, not 
far from the residence of her son *s family. She had prom- 
ised to reward one after another of her relatives by a gen- 
erous remembrance in her will, if they would live with her; 



A LEAP-YEAE ROIVIANCE 249 

and several of them had made the attempt, but she was so 
absolute and exacting, and so bad-tempered, that they had 
all left her to a solitude which she had slowly come to en- 
joy, till now the gathering infirmities of years had brought 
a growing sense of helplessness. She had always abused 
Josie^s mother — now as a soft-hearted, weak-minded thing, 
whom her son was impulsive enough to marry out of sheer 
pity ; now as a wily, scheming upstart, who had woven her 
subtle charms about her husband 's heart with a cunning in- 
spired by ambition, not by love. Still Josie had always 
been her favorite grandchild. The old lady now felt self- 
ishly glad that she did not seem disposed to marry, and 
glad that her new enterprise had brought her, even with 
her detested invalid mother, to be an inmate of the same 
house with her. 

Miss Newell found herself living in a new world. It was 
not the ideal life her fancy had so often painted. It was 
so crowded with occupations that she had little time at 
first to indulge in feelings of either joy or regret. Her 
heart beat high with aspiration and hope. If love was 
denied her, she was about to find more than it could give 
in a new mission broad as philanthropy itself, and high and 
noble as a purely unselfish devotion could make it. She 
was surprised at her own executive energy and dispatch. 
The buildings rose rapidly. The design, the arrangement 
of rooms and grounds, all was her own. She figured out 
every night an approximate estimate of the expenses of 
the day in labor and material, interested prominent citi- 
zens to subscribe for a scholarship and prize fund, and 
found time to visit many other institutions large and small, 
and to gain some insight into methods of instruction and 
administration, besides devoting a stated portion of each 
day to special preparation in her own line of teaching. 
The city council had been induced to remit her municipal 



250 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

taxes for the first year, and even the school board were 
at first disposed to make friendly advances. 

At last all things were ready, and the institute was 
thrown open to students. Three quarters of the large bevy 
of young ladies who presented themselves succeeded in 
passing the required examination, the standard of which, 
though it was held ostentatiously high in the prospectus, 
it was thought best quietly to lower, like a leaping-pole in 
a circus-ring, which is ducked dexterously down under the 
feet of the clumsiest athlete, and then instantly raised 
higher than ever. All the exercises of dedication and in- 
auguration were postponed until the end of the academ- 
ic year, and a sort of scholastic quiet gradually began to 
pervade the premises. All the while, with rare administra- 
tive tact, Miss Newell was at work collecting and investing 
funds, animating her band of teachers with her own spirit, 
personally soliciting patronage, and everywhere directing 
improvements, so that she found time for but three hours 
per week of actual classroom work. 

But now one of those strange and startling tragedies of 
domestic life, which often seem too sudden and phenomenal 
for the uses of fiction, came like a stunning volcanic explo- 
sion, which scatters its scorching debris over newly-mown 
but fertile and reblooming acres. Miss Newell 's mother 
had once been a woman of much intelligence and breadth 
of sympathy, but affliction, confirmed moodiness, and fan- 
cied neglect, had slowly led her from easy-going, liberal 
views upon religious matters first to absolute and implicit 
faith in the letter of Scripture, and then to a sterner and 
severer subjection of her reason to the captious logic of 
medieval interpretations. The good women of the Presby- 
terian Church in Springtown, who had often held their 
sewing-circles at Miss Newell 's for her mother's accommo- 
dation, were sometimes thrilled by the impassioned fervor 
with which her mother applied her favorite denunciatory 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 251 

texts to some of their commonly sanctioned practices and 
amusements. The vigorous austerity of Puritanism was 
the form of life contemplated by the Bible she read. Her 
creed continued to grow narrow as her heart grew cold, 
till at length all her thoughts centered about the doctrine 
of the depravity of the human heart, and the awful hazard 
of eternal despair which encompasses every soul. She 
loved more and more the solitude of her own room. Her 
gloomy, brooding self-consciousness could be broken only 
momentarily by the society of friends or by riding abroad. 
At length the sense of impending doom of which she lost 
no opportunity to warn others with grim vehemence, as 
they gradually left her to her own musings, she began to 
feel for herself. When she was moved to Ashton she 
seemed brighter for a time, but at length shut herself up 
in her own room to escape the occasional outbursts of the 
temper of her mother-in-law, and would allow no one to 
enter save her children. 

One evening, to celebrate the close of the winter's term, 
Miss Newell had prepared, with her grandmother's reluc- 
tant consent, to entertain a select number of her friends 
and patrons. The guests had assembled, and were chat- 
ting in the parlor, while in the dining-room Miss Newell 
was herself superintending the preparation of the table. 
Wine was standing upon the sideboard, and some one had 
struck up a merry air upon the old piano. Suddenly Miss 
Newell 's mother appeared in the parlor doorway, and gazed 
about with a glance so fierce and frowning that to those 
who noted her she seemed like the sudden apparition of a 
horrible specter. In an instant, and without a word, she 
hobbled unaided to the dining-room. 

*'Why, mother," exclaimed Miss Newell, in great aston- 
ishment, **how in the world did you get downstairs? We 
said nothing to you about it, because we feared it would 



2S2 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

distress you. You shall stay now, and have a seat here 
next to me/* 

*^ Josephine, Josephine!'* cried her mother, aloud, her 
rancor against happiness roused almost to frenzy. *'In 
there you have made me hear the sound of the dance. This 
you have made a room for gluttons and wine-bibbers,'* she 
continued, slowly and more loudly than before. ''I have 
raised up chfldren, and they have rebelled against me. 
You have brought down my gray hairs with sorrow to 
the grave. Would to God that you had never been born ! * * 

Mortified and really alarmed at the unusual violence of 
these exclamations. Miss Newell could only entreat her to 
calm herself and speak lower. 

''Never!" she shouted. ''I speak the still small voice of 
conscience and of God — a voice you must hear again at 
the last great day. Help me to my room now, ' ' she added, 
a new and sudden purpose changing her voice and man- 
ner. ''There you cannot hinder me from praying God to 
pluck your soul as a brand from the burniag. Then I 
shall have finished my duty toward you." 

She was aided upstairs, and the company had just taken 
their seats about the table, awkwardly trying to resume 
their tone after the embarrassing incident, when a heavy, 
falling sound was heard overhead. Instantly every face 
took on a look of terror, and, without a spoken word, the 
thrill of a nameless fear chilled every heart, and Miss New- 
ell, her grandmother, and several of the more familiar 
guests, hastened to the invalid's room. It was locked, and 
there was no answer to their call. Miss Newell was the 
first to pass into an adjoining chamber, out upon an open 
porch, then into her mother's room. There, upon her 
knees, her body resting upon the sofa, lay her mother, 
already dead, the blood streaming from a wound in her 
temple. 

Miss Newell had come to feel an increased sense of 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 253 

safety in her solitary mode of life in keeping a tiny pistol, 
an old present from her brother, and scarcely larger than 
her little finger, in the drawer of the stand which stood at 
her bedside, and it was this her mother had used, holding 
it so close to her head*that no report had been heard, and 
the entire charge had entered her brain. When the others 
entered the chamber of death, there sat Miss Newell upon 
the floor, holding her mother's head in her lap, wiping 
away the oozing blood, and kissing the pale lips and up- 
turned eyes whereon now rested a sweet, placid smile, such 
as in happier days, long and weary years ago, had shed 
joy upon her childhood. In the wild insanity of sudden 
grief, the daughter called the mother by every endearing 
name, while friends gathered around speechless and power- 
less to render aid or comfort. But it was only for a mo- 
ment. The grandmother had made her way to the scene, 
and her lamentations were so abandoned and uncontrollable 
that Miss Newell, with a great effort at self-possession, at 
last led her away, to her own chamber, where a long, cling- 
ing embrace seemed to calm them both. Returning almost 
immediately to the dreadful scene of death, upon which 
strong men gazed an instant and then turned away, cover- 
ing their eyes with their hands. Miss Newell was the first 
to rememoer that the law must be satisfied and a coroner's 
jury summoned, and she withdrew only when nothing 
more could be done. 

"When the verdict of the jury was made known, *'Died 
from a wound inflicted by her own hand," the old lady^a 
grief burst forth anew. \ 

"Oh, deary me ! deary me!" she wailed. **Just to think 
where them that kills themselves goes to ! I shall meet all 
my kith and kin on the shining shore but her, and I drove 
her to it — I know I did! Oh, deary, deary me!" 

Miss Newell listened some time to such exclamations, till 
all that was within her rose in rebellion, even then in the 



254 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

hour of ^ief. *'Husli, grandmother !' ' she said. *'If 
Christ ^s love means anything, it means hope, and comfort, 
and help in this extremity; it must bring all that these 
words can possibly mean to us now — all that we can wish 
them to mean. ' ' Ever after that the two women seemed to 
grow nearer to each other in heart, and tried to inspire in 
each other comfort and good cheer, though each knew that 
the other passed solitary hours of silent grief. 

For Miss Newell, too, a nameless horror seemed to per- 
vade the house. Ghostly shapes flitted over her pillow at 
night. She fancied scowling, spectral faces peering in at 
the windows. She would start and turn suddenly about 
before her glass at night, imagining she saw vanishing and 
monstrous forms, and no effort of reason could banish the 
delusion. 

Thus weeks wore away. Her school duties were per- 
formed more and more listlessly and mechanically; and at 
length, although spring was crowding all the pulses of nat- 
ural life with its freshness and wondrous power and beauty, 
her cheeks continued to grow thin and pale. 

At length her little brother fell sick, and suddenly, with 
the last melting snows of winter, his innocent spirit passed 
away. TheTi tears fell freely and brought actual relief. 
Then the house was swept of all its strange, haunting hor- 
rors. Then grandmother and granddaughter drew very 
near each other in mutual sympathy and love, and Miss 
Newell found herself warmed with a new affection toward 
the young, taking all her pupils into her heart more than 
ever before. And when the first year of her school closed, 
with the formal exercises of dedication, she sought rest, 
feeling that now she could give herself wholly, and without 
reserve or distraction, to her chosen work. 

Autumn came again, but, in spite of her fresh hopes and 
purposes, Miss Newell experienced a shrinking reluctance 
to enter upon the duties of the opening term, which it re- 



A LEAP.YEAE KOMANCE 255 

quired no small effort to overcome. The institute was full, 
and she busied herseL£ at once in making such changes and 
introducing such new features as the experiences of the 
past year and her own summer musings had suggested. An 
extended course of art-study was introduced, which had 
been hitherto entirely excluded. Religious instruction was 
given on Sundays by each teacher in her own way, and all 
the pupils were required to attend, each where she wished. 
Alternate studies were provided for some of the severer 
branches. A fortnightly lecture-course, to which the town 
was invited, was planned for the benefit of the library. 
Miss Newell resigned many of the official duties she had 
previously executed, into other hands, that she might at- 
tend to the experiment of a Kindergarten, which she had 
planned to hold in a neat new building at one extremity of 
her grounds — and also that she might have more time for 
self -culture. 

But in all that she did or thought there was a subdued 
temper, born in part from a sense of loss and of fatigue, 
which she vainly tried to overcome by increased applica- 
tion. Superior to her sex in general, as she fancied herself, 
Bhe had, like most women — the strongest-minded, perhaps, 
least of all — little power distinctly to realize or analyze her 
own motives and emotions; else she would have come to 
know ere this that what had lately sustained and now sub- 
dued her was a love for Professor Moors, which, shallow 
and impulsive as it had been at first, was daily absorbing 
more and more of her whole being. She was little con- 
scious of the depth and strength it had already acquired, 
still less of the futility of all the resources she sought 
against it. In every hour of repose, when the inner cham- 
bers of her soul were opened, there was his image shriued 
in the holiest place, idealized now by absence, and deferred, 
almost hopeless longing. It was this idealization of her 
love that supported and perhaps saved her. It had awak- 



256 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

ened purer and deeper instincts, warmed her heart with 
truer social sjrmpathies, and almost won its cause against 
old and still pleading ambitions before the tribunal of 
reason and judgment. Under all the weight of sorrow she 
had felt, far below all the bustle and noise of distracting 
cares and duties, against the current of all her conscious 
purposes, a new life was springing forth which already 
ministered peace and joy. It was a life so warm and glow- 
ing that it might one day melt all the ice of selfishness and 
distorted ideals and proud reserve which had so long de- 
layed the growth of more womanly sentiments. Professor 
Moors did not love her, she said to herself. Mrs. Elmore, 
in her officious zeal, had cruelly deceived her; and it was 
not so much, she was coming to believe, the change of cir- 
cumstances which her brother's marriage had brought, as 
it was mortification mingled with desire to escape from a 
passion powerful only when it had been denied, that had 
made Springtown unendurable to her. 

Love for him had suggested her present vocation, and it 
was sweet to feel that, impassable as was the gulf that 
separated her forever from him whose memory was now so 
fond, she was constantly drawing nearer to him in com- 
mon sympathies, tastes, and pursuits; for how close are 
those who labor in the same spirit and for the same object! 
She read and reread his letter, so full of cutting reproach 
and stern rejection of all she could offer. The time at 
length came when she must confess to herself how utterly 
he had come to fill her heart. She was able to find some 
comfort in the thought that she was doing as he wished 
her to do whose destiny was to be shared with him. How 
much more of a helpmeet she might be to him now than be- 
fore! But no, she never would deceive herself again for 
a moment. Every possibility in that direction must now 
be banished from her most secret thought absolutely and 
forever. What remained? They were both solitary, both 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 257 

laboring in the same field, and by mutual council and 
advice might perhaps be of great service to each other and 
to the cause to which they were both devoted. Friendship 
would be an inestimable boon. Perhaps it was a duty they 
owed to others if not to themselves. The purest feelings, 
she had read from Comte, were those formed by the high- 
est duties. Such was the course of her often-disturbed 
thoughts for many days, till slowly all the currents of her 
soul set in one channel toward this one object. She felt 
the need of counsel. She would show Professor Moors, at 
least, that she harbored no resentment — that all her pride 
had been sacrificed ; and so she wrote to him again, hastily 
and impulsively, as was her nature: 

Dear Sir: 

I wish to acknowledge and express my deep regret for a note that 
I sent you many months ago. The blame was all mine, and would 
that I could offer something more than a tardy and cheap apology 
for any trouble it has caused you! I thought your reply cruel. 
I was mistaken. It was just — yes, kind. Bitter as it then seemed, 
I owe to it I know not how much good that has since come to me. 
I do not venture, in writing again, to seek any answer to my ques- 
tions which you then passed by. That I have ceased to desire, but 
I wish to say that it would now be, to me at least, an advantage 
and a pleasure if such friendship and communication as our common 
interests and pursuits suggest might be established between us. 
This, however, by every consideration, is for you to say. Indeed, 
I should be so chiefly the gainer thereby that I half suspect my 
own motive in writing to be selfish and wrong. I beg leave to sub- 
Bcribe myself 

Your friend, 

Josephine Newell. 

A postscript added an invitation to Professor Moors to 
deliver the opening lecture of a free course in Ashton be- 
fore the girls of the Newell Institute, on any subject that 
he deemed suitable. 

The professor received this note in the midst of the duties 
and vexations of a new year and a new position, compli- 
cated and almost doubled as they were by the disorders of 
previous mismanagement and present inefficiency. He re- 
membered the indomitable perseverance which Mrs. EJmore 



258 RECEEATIONS OP A PSYCHOLOGIST 

had described as the chief trait of Miss Newell 's character. 
The latter, he reflected, had doubtless thought, as he had, 
of the material advantages which might accrue from any 
association of their interests. Perhaps, also, other experi- 
ences, with which eligible old bachelors are only too fa- 
miliar, had led him, as does so many, to suspect matrimonial 
devices to be lurking under every act and word of all mar- 
riageable women. At any rate, he scribbled only a hasty 
and ill-considered reply: 

I do not believe in Platonic love. As a man of business, however, 
I can accede to both your propositions, provided only that I can put 
you down for such exercises as I see fit — at a Teachers' Institute 
I have planned here soon after the date of the lecture. 

Miss Newell pondered long and sadly. All the old grief 
was fresh again in her heart. Could she appear as a public 
speaker ? How strange, with the views she had heard him 
express, that he should ask it! Yet she had often wished 
for such an opportunity as this. But could she curb all her 
old pride and appear in Springtown, before the staring 
townsfolk she had always looked down upon, as a common 
teacher among teachers, and there make, perhaps, the worst 
appearance of any? What would Mrs. Elmore think, and, 
above all, how could she stand before Professor Moors 
again, who was always so calmly balanced and possessed, 
so hypercritical, as she fancied? Perhaps he wished only 
to study and experiment with her. No, he could not be 
so utterly unfeeling. At any rate, she would go, and so it 
was arranged. 

n 

The evening of the lecture Professor Moors called, and 
walked with Miss Newell to the hall. The manner of both 
was constrained, almost awkward. It was late, and they 
hastened on in silence, or speaking only upon incidental 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 259 

topics. Her form was as erect and her step as lithe as 
ever, but he observed new lines of care upon her face. 
Her brow seemed heavy, and yet her eyes were larger and 
more lustrous than before, and the whole mold of her regu- 
lar, strongly Grecian features was mellowed by a new ex- 
pression of sadness and tenderness. 

The hall was crowded, and for the first time in her life 
Miss Newell found herself speaking in the presence of a 
large audience. The professor was introduced as a distin- 
guished educationist, whose views were worthy of the most 
thoughtful consideration of all. 

Stepping to the front of the platform, he began in a very 
conversational style, but with perfect and deliberate pos- 
session : 

*'By the courtesy of my friend, I am to have the honor 
of presenting my views to-night on the higher education 
of women — a subject of such vast interest and importance 
that I shall venture to ask your serious attention to a plain 
and free talk, without any of the formality of the lecture- 
room. Woman is dishonored most by those who pronounce 
studied eulogies upon her sex, and attempt to caress her 
self-love by enumerating main and conspicuous instances 
which illustrate her virtues. These are as admirable, as 
various in kind and degree, as indispensable to human well- 
being in every way, as man's; and it is a flippancy bom 
of assumed superiority and of shallow ignorance of the 
forces that make up the world of thought and action which 
assumes that the claims and needs of one half the human 
race are to be met either by the dexterous compliment of 
the drawing-room, or even by smoothing woman's way to 
the ballot-box and to public positions. To define her proper 
station is a practical problem so vast that all theories thus 
far are crudely and even grotesquely inadequate, and its 
solution must be left to the general course of thought and 
events." 



260 RECREATIONS OP A PSYCHOLOGIST 

His manner and utterance were so graceful that the at- 
tention of every one present was fastened upon the speaker. 
Miss Newell smiled and nodded her approval to her first 
assistant, who sat upon the platform by her side, and who 
smiled grimly in return, but whispered, **I fear we ought 
to have learned more about his views before we invited him 
here.'* 

**I think we can trust him,'* Miss Newell replied. 

** Meanwhile, ' ' continued the speaker, **let me confess 
frankly at the outset that, while I cannot believe with a 
great writer that she is the best woman of whom least is 
said or known, and while I would not challenge her abstract 
right to any position or pursuit, I am ancient enough to 
believe that the public franchise, that business and most 
professional careers, that even severe and protracted men- 
tal culture, are the last and least things that she ought to 
seek, or her friends to claim for her. The home is older 
than the school. Piety, courage, love of truth, were first 
taught there. Nay, more: religion itself prospers or de- 
clines with home-life. When home is made attractive, in- 
temperance and all the vices of private indulgence diminish 
in rapid ratio. She is the best woman who is the best wife, 
rears the best children, and fills home with the choicest 
fruitions. The range of emotion is deeper and wider than 
that of thought, and her wondrous endowment of sensibility 
gives woman such a breadth of experience that a contracted 
sphere of life imposes little restraint, for no experience can 
give adequate utterance to what the meanest can feel. The 
divinest service man can perform for woman is to voice 
her own inner life, to reflect to her mind that which fills 
her heart, and which she strives in vaia to realize or to 
express, and what he needs in her is a heart-culture that 
shall give a steady flow of pure and healthy sentiment, 
where he can ever go for sympathy and comfort, and which 
will save him from a life of dry intellectuality or mechani- 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 261 

cal routine or misanthropy. I am one of those who be- 
lieve that the highest and most perfect form of emotion 
is a sense of complete dependence and unreserved self- 
surrender. The religious sentiment — love for any and 
every worthy object, esthetic susceptibilities which respond 
to beauty wherever found, and even conscience — all are 
but diverse forms of this supreme feeling, elements of 
what the poet describes as the soul of eternal womanhood. 
Alas for that man who has not learned to reverence this 
ideal, and thrice happy he who has found it worthily en- 
shrined in some tender, loving heart!" 

After this introduction the speaker proceeded to explain 
with, some detail what he deemed to be the true subjects, 
aims, and methods, of female education. His views were, 
on the whole, somewhat abstract, immature, and quite reac- 
tionary, but so earnestly advocated that a round of hearty 
applause greeted him at the close. 

**Just look at Miss Hardtack's nose!" giggled one of the 
girls, as an elderly teacher, a tall, slender creature, sprang 
to her feet and hastened from the stage the instant the 
speaker ended, and began talking rapidly, and apparently 
in high dudgeon, with a middle-aged, mild-minded trustee. 
If such a rigid martinet as Miss Hardtack was offended, 
that was sufficient reason why all the girls should like the 
professor, and all they could or could not understand in 
jhis lecture. 

No one upon the platform, however, had a word of con- 
gratulation for him, until just as he was hastily taking his 
departure to catch the evening train to Springtown, Miss 
Newell came to him while most of the audience yet re- 
mained in the hall, and smiling her approval, and placing 
her hand in his, thanked him cordially for his lecture. 

**I do not object to most of your views," she said; ''and, 
on the whole, I am glad to have them expressed here, though 
some of my friends will be quite seriously displeased." 



262 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

She would have added more, but just then a wealthy 
and influential old German, whose patronage Miss Newell 
had vainly tried to obtain, bustled on to the platform, and, 
grasping the professor's hand, said: 

*'Dat is vot I calls goot sound doctrine. You shall have 
both my girls, and I vill do vot I can for you, too, Miss 
Nevell/' 

The professor expressed his gratitude, and quickly left 
the hall. 

** After all," he mused, sadly, to himself, as he rode 
homeward, ''so many women seem made to deceive them- 
selves, and to live and thrive upon delusions, it is not 
strange if they cannot help deceiving others." 

In a week Miss Newell was in Springtown again. As 
she entered the village, and 4s the associations of two years 
ago were revived one after another at every step, she felt 
all her calmness and self-control giving way to a state of 
fluttering, nervous expectancy, whether bodeful of good or 
ill she vainly wondered. There was her old home, which, 
although now sold to a stranger, furniture and all, was still 
unoccupied^. There were the tin-clad spires and brick mina- 
rets of the main college-building, and the red walls of 
the dormitories half covered with American i^^, dyed with 
all the hues of autumn. And there came Professor Moors, 
hastening to meet her party, and to offer them the best 
entertainment which the hospitality of the villagers could 
afford. 

''Do you stop with friends, or shall we provide for you 
with the rest of the party?" he asked, doubtfully, as they 
approached Mrs. Elmore's gate. 

**I will go on with the rest," she murmured, dropping 
her veil, and slightly quickening her pace. 

"Mr. Hand will entertain two guests. Shall I take you 
and your assistant there?" he asked. 

Mr. Hand she remembered as a worthy and well-to-do 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 26a 

old fanner, from whose dairy and garden she had often 
supplied her table, and his wife was one of the most sa- 
gacious oracles of the village gossip. 

''I have no choice," she said. And there they were es- 
corted, to make ready for the first session of the institute, 
which was to begin in an hour, while the professor has- 
tened away to give directions about their baggage. 

Miss Newell 's presence excited great interest among the 
teachei^. The fame of her enterprise had preceded her. 
She explained in a quiet, modest way the plan and aim of 
her own school, what she believed the true order of studies, 
her own theories and methods of imparting literary culture 
to young ladies, and found herself obliged to answer, as 
best she could, many perplexing questions. But, because 
Professor Moors seemed to listen with appreciation, she 
found her interest increasing with every exercise, and, con- 
trary to her plans, she remained to the end of the last day's 
session. At the close, he took occasion to express publicly 
his deep appreciation of her services, and adding after- 
ward, to her alone, words of warmest praise, offered her a 
check for a small amount, saying: 

*'I thought you might dislike to have any remuneration 
for your valuable assistance publicly voted by the associa- 
tion, and so, using my discretionary power over its funds 
as president, I beg you to accept this. ' ' 

Instantly the same rigid pallor of indignation which he 
had once before observed with so much alarm overspread 
her face, but she only said: 

"I could never consent to receive pay under the cir- 
cumstances. ' ' 

The days she had looked forward to with such mingled, 
but anxious, feelings were now ended. All the old acquaint- 
ances whom she met observed a new grace and sweetness 
in her face and manner, and had remarked upon the 
change. It had inspired them with a more cordial and ten- 



264 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

der regard, which in some almost took the form of pity. 
She, too, had noted the change in their manner, and she 
had ever found herself asking if they could know or suspect 
her great secret. She had visited the old home, and sat 
again in her own old room and mused drearily over the 
sad and impassable chasm which so soon had yawned be- 
tween her and the old life now gone for evermore. She had 
taken again a long, solitary walk down the glen and home 
over the hill. From the window of her room she had seen 
Mrs. Elmore ride past, but she had no wish to meet her. 

As she walked slowly toward the station with her assist- 
ant, to take the evening train, she again met Professor 
Moors. Leaning upon his arm, and looking up earnestly 
into his face, she recognized Mrs. Elmore's niece, Emma 
May. 

They had been warm friends in their school-days. Al- 
though rivals in the class-room, no feeling of emulation had 
ever prevented them from sharing each other's secrets, or 
laying famous plans for a future in which they were always 
to be associated, till, as they reached maturity, the latter 
grew diverse. 

Miss May had little of her companion's energy of soul, 
stiU less of her reserve, but her character was a combina- 
tion of ingenuousness so complete that it often lapsed into 
effusiveness with admirable tact — a combination as happy 
as it is rare. She had devoted herself with great enthusi- 
asm to art, and had just returned from four years of for- 
eign study. 

There was an instant of mutual recognition on the part 
of the ladies, but both seemed determined to make the 
gathering darkness an excuse for hastening on without 
salutation. 

''They do say,'' began Miss Newell's companion, *'that 
Professor Moors is visiting that girl, and that she is very 
handsome and accomplished, and has brought home from. 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 265 

Europe some beautiful pictures of her own that will make 
her famous. Come to think, you must know her, for she 
grew up here.'* 

' ' She was my old playmate. Excuse me now if I cannot 
talk of her, ' ' said Miss Newell, unable to control herself. 

The glib, chatty little normal teacher looked at her in 
speechless amazement, and scarcely spoke again till they 
reached Ashton. 

Once securely in her own room at her grandmother's, 
Miss Newell gave way to such violence of grief as she had 
never felt before. She walked up and down with stream- 
ing eyes, and then threw herself upon her bed, and buried 
her face in the pillow to stifle her sobs. It was an angry 
grief. 

"What right has this man to come between me and my 
long-cherished plans — to embitter all my life? I offered 
him all, and he deliberately poisoned love 's arrows for me, 
and feels no pang himself, while I love on in vain." 

Her heart did not break ; but all the ice which had so long 
hardened about it was melted now, and gradually she grew 
calm. Then a sense of bitter loss succeeded; yet she felt 
that her life was isolated from all those warm human sym- 
pathies which soothe and support. The world to her seemed 
a dreary sea, on which she was floating and drifting hope- 
lessly, while day and night, like unmeaning light and 
shadow, were brightening and darkling over her unrespon- 
sive spirit, and while from the heavens above, deep and in- 
scrutable as destiny, came no answer to her prayers. Thus 
benumbed, and stricken through and through with despair, 
she sank, toward morning, into a fitful sleep. 

Mr. Meechum was a bustling little man, with a head pre- 
maturely tinged with gray, and with a parboiled complex- 
ion, who had been for several years superintendent of 
schools at Ashton. Miss Newell had known him in college, 
when he had the reputation of being a first-class election- 



266 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

eerer and trotter for his society, a somewhat obsequious 
and very serviceable man in general. He had a wise, 
scheming and politic brain, and a rare talent for pleasing 
all without committing himself to anybody or anything in 
particular, and without ever expressing a decided opinion. 
By his genius for trimming and shuffling he had managed 
to find or make his way into the best society of the town 
without being looked upon as a social parasite. If there 
was anything to which he stood fairly committed it was 
the view that men and women were absolutely equal and 
alike in the schoolroom, and must have the same hours, 
privileges, grade, and wages. This he had said in a card 
to the Ashton Torchlight, and this gained him his election 
•by a handsome majority over his competitors. He had 
watched Miss Newell and her enterprise from the first with 
the liveliest concern, and, as they grew in popular favor, 
not without some dismay. 

But mature reflection revealed matters in a new light. 
Here was a chance for a most advantageous alliance. Edu- 
cational and social prestige was the prize. Cooperation 
between the new institute and the public schools he knew 
Miss Newell had sought with little success thus far. He 
had called on her, and talked over a plan by which, with 
slight changes which it was in his power to make, all girl- 
graduates of the high-schools might be prepared to enter 
the institute. He had enlarged on the reciprocal advan- 
tages»of harmonious relations between them, to all of which 
Miss Newell had very warmly assented. Of late he had 
been quite a frequent caller, and Miss Newell had met him 
with a courtesy which he felt to be very flattering. In 
Miss Newell's absence her grandmother had several times 
received him, and his manner had been so gracious that she 
had been completely won over to his interests. 

It was nearly noon the day after Josie's return from 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 267 

Springtown that the old lady entered her granddaughter's 
room with breakfast on a tray. 

**I thought I'd fetch it up myself, just to see how you 
git on ; though ef you hain 't slept out yit I '11 come up again 
bime-hy. But it's gettin' rather hard to lug my old bones 
up the steep, squeaky stairs/' 

** Thank you. Please set it on the stand. I will get up 
soon," said Miss Newell, wearily. 

**Why, law sakes alive! How dragged out you do look. 
Humph! And no wonder you hain't got no emptins left 
in you after all you've been a-doin' on a fortnight back. 
Josie, it ain't in natur', unless you're made out of steel 
springs and ingines, to work so. I've done it all my life, 
but 'pears like young folks ain't made o' the same stuff 
as we was in my day. And now I think on it," continued 
the old lady, settling herself into a chair, and lowering her 
voice at the same time, and vastly pleased with herself to 
think she had introduced the special object of her \^sit with 
so much tact, ''there! Mr. Meechum's called — let me see — 
once, twice, to see you when you was away. Now, I '11 allow 
he ain't no stavin' great shakes — p'r'aps. I don't s'pose 
he 'd ever set a river afire, but he ain 't no booby, and that 's 
sartin as preachin'. He hain't never let on to me, not one 
word. I reckon he feels a little kinder shameful, and loath 
to speak. He ain't one of them kind as blurts right out 
like some, and I don't s'pose he's ever said anything to 
you. As long ago as you and he was in Springtown study- 
in', Mrs. Hand once said to me at a quiltin', says she, just 
as hateful as she always was arter about three cups of tea, 
when her eyes begun to bung out of her head, and her 
tongue to run at both ends — says she, 'There's Meechum 
and Josie — how's that for a match?' I was bitin' mad 
then, and I just up and spoke right out in meeting'. Says 
I, ' Mrs, Hand, you git a new whimsey eveiy cup o ' young 
hyson you drink. He couldn't shake a stick at Josie, and 



268 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

everybody knows that only you. ' But I look at things very 
different from what I used to," she continued, with some 
tenderness in her accent. ''Now, Josie, s'posin I drop off 
sudden, what 11 you do all alone in the world? And Mee- 
chum thinks so much of you he'd always do just as you 
wanted him to. He'd make such a nice and obleegin' hus- 
band, and if you don't feel the need of one now you will 
bime-by. You ain 't grouty 'cause I spoke of it, are you ? ' ' 
said she, after a pause. 

"Oh, no, dear grandmother; I will get up and take my 
breakfast," said Miss Newell, rising and kissing the old 
lady, who started off to the kitchen, pleased at the fancied 
success of her diplomacy. 

Miss Newell resumed all her old school duties the next 
week, but they had lost all interest for her. She was fight- 
ing with a stout heart and an iron will against despair now. 
Mr. Meechum continued to call. Miss Newell was even glad 
to see him. His society was far more pleasant to her than 
self-communion. But her manner was such that he ven- 
tured to make no advances. 

Thus some weeks passed before the inevitable crisis came. 
Despondency, anxiety, overwork, had brought sleepless- 
ness, and at last utter nervous prostration, and Miss Newell 
found herself obliged to resign all school duties to her assist- 
ants, and to seek rest and quiet in a change of scene. The 
physicians prescribed Europe. The sea-air and the new 
interests of foreign travel might revive and refresh quickly, 
at any rate most surely. The present must be entirely 
banished from her consciousness for a time, or the worst 
consequences might ensue. And so it was at length ar- 
ranged. As the day of her departure approached, Ashton 
and her home began to seem unendurable to her. It was 
well she must go, for she could no longer stay. Her fevered 
fancy boded some nameless and impending calamity if she 
did not hasten her departure. She felt, too, that she was 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 269 

leaving a life to which, she was never to return. But some- 
thiQg within, resistless as destiny, urged her on. It was 
with much effort that she met friends and pupils for the 
final adieus. She fancied that all saw her heart, and read 
its inmost secret. Despite the protest of her physician, and 
the most earnest remonstrance of friends, she persisted in 
starting upon the long journey alone. She must resolutely 
face all her griefs, and carefully and persistently think 
and feel her own unaided way through them all to sanity 
again, or be lost. 

During these final days of preparation Mr. Meechum was 
unusually attentive. He was constantly bustling about, 
offering every conceivable kind of aid. His services, offi- 
cious as they grew, were accepted with courtesy. Even 
when he proposed a correspondence on educational mat- 
ters she had no power to refuse. He accompanied her on 
the train to a distant town, and his unctuous good-by was 
the last friendly voice she heard before leaving her native 
shore. 

The voyage was delightful. The bracing sea-air, the un- 
wonted sights, and sounds, and pastimes on shipboard, 
soothed and calmed her beyond the most sanguine predic- 
tion of the physician. Instead of resolving all the oppres- 
sive sadness of the last few months by sternly looking the 
specters of the mind out of countenance, as she had hoped, 
she seemed to herself to be leaving them far behind. 

Animated by a lively and curious interest, she passed 
some months in flitting from place to place, seldom leaving 
the frequented paths of foreign travel, but seeing all that 
a woman may see in a few days in Glasgow, London, Paris, 
Geneva, Florence, Rome, Venice, Vienna, until at last, 
fatigued with sight-seeing and guide-books, she determined 
to pass what remained of the winter and the spring in 
Berlin. Her kiad-hearted old German patron in Ashtou 
had insisted on giving her a note to his friends in that citjr. 



270 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

which now she was heartily glad to use. It introduced her 
to a family of considerable refinement and gentility, who 
kindly assisted her in finding suitable lodgings, and whose 
friendship and hospitality were so cordially offered that 
she learned to look to them for almost daily counsel and 
assistance. 

The war with France had ended long ago ; and, although 
the Prussian capital was already the center of progressive 
Teutonism, the vestiges of old German particularism were 
yet abundant, and Miss Newell was charmed to find that 
she had fallen in with the simple life of the old Berlin 
burgher. The quaint and well-kept furniture, the peculiar 
provincial accent and vocabulary, the home-made garments 
for everyday, the coarse fare, the heartfelt piety that so 
reverenced each morsel of daily bread as a special token of 
heavenly favor, the unquestioning loyalty to God and the 
kaiser, and, amid and over all, such abundant measure of 
the untranslatable Gefm/ilthMchJceit — all this endeared her 
new friends, and helped to give life a new zest again. With 
another American lady, whose acquaintance she had made 
by chance. Miss Newell even ventured to call on the new 
rector of the university and solicit the privilege of attend- 
ing lectures; and at last, after much delay, was informed 
that for the first time the academic senate had voted per- 
mission to attend, provided the consent of the several in- 
structors could be obtained, although matriculation was 
not allowed to women. But the observations excited by 
her presence among the students was so embarrassing, the 
lecture so special, and her acquaintance with the language 
so inadequate, that Miss Newell soon left her more hardy 
and ambitious companion to the sole enjoyment of this 
privilege, and decided to apply herself to drawing under 
the direction of a visiting instructor. 

Herr Schroder was an enthusiast in his devotion to art. 
When a young man, he had visited Rome with a few com- 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 271 

panions, who, like himself, were fired with the ardent pur- 
pose of making art the means of restoring the Fatherland 
to the hosom of the true church. Devotion must he pas- 
sionate in order to he pure, they maintained. Europe had 
lapsed into secularism, which was only a euphemism for 
doubt. Faith alone could reanimate the corpse of modern 
society. It was the divine mission of art to realize the 
good and the true in the forms of the beautiful. True art 
is that which translates the vital doctrines of Scripture and 
sacred tradition into forms of sense most adequately and 
effectively. 

Some of the little band assumed almost the garb and 
habits of life of one of the monastic orders. Two of their 
number had vowed celibacy. They met semi-weekly to criti- 
cize each other's work, and to share each other's new in- 
sights and enthusiasms. When they returned to Germany, 
and slowly realized how fond and vain their hopes had 
been, some clung with yet more passionate devotion to their 
principles after, and perhaps because, it was apparent how 
dreamy and barren they were. Others gradually fell away 
to pagan styles and subjects, despite the sharp reproaches 
of their old associates. Herr Schroder belonged to the for- 
mer class. He had become known at Berlin as one of the 
most earnest and accomplished of modem ''Diisseldorfers.*' 
Surrounded then by hostile influences, he had so often al- 
lowed himself to lay down the pencil and brush for the 
pen of the critic and controversialist that his hand had 
grown less facile on the canvas. From this and a variety 
of other causes he had at length become a teacher of his art 
without losing any of the commingled religious and esthetic 
fervor and sentimentalism which had so strongly charac- 
terized his youth. 

This pleased Miss Newell. She loved to listen to her in- 
structor's rhapsodic accounts of his emotions on first visit- 
ing Rome, to his description of the grand masterpieces of 



272 RECEEATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

medieval art he had studied there, and of the incalculable 
influence which they had exerted upon the tone of modern 
Christendom. She found his zeal contagious when he ex- 
patiated upon the mission of art in the world in localizing 
and harmonizing divine truth. She became interested in 
the history of painting, and visited with her instructor 
several of the numerous private galleries in the city. 

''Is it not plain," he said to her, one day, *Hhat religious 
devotion alone can inspire real artistic genius?" 

* ' I have seen too little to form any opinion as yet, ' ' she 
replied. ''But, surely, you do not deny genius to the 
Greeks?" 

"They knew how to treat the body," he replied, "but 
there is nothing in all classical antiquity that satisfies, or 
even appeals strongly to, the soul. Not till the discipline 
of the Church had taught men to mortify the flcvsh, and to 
find the higher meaning of life in meditation and prayer, 
did art learn to make the face mere expressive than the 
hand." 

' ' At least you do not deny great merit to what you term 
profane or secular art?" she queried. 

"Suppose," said he, "an artist paints fruit and flower 
studies so perfectly to the eye that one cannot distinguish 
the original from the copy. What good is done? It is at 
best but a reduplication of Nature. Some chromo-photo- 
graphic art may be invented any day that shall make all that 
superfluous. As to pagan mythology, not only does it lack 
the prime element of reality, is unsubstantial as dreams, 
cloud-shadows, instead of reflections of heavenly truth, but 
it yields either no moral or a bad one. No artist who has 
labored in this field has ever overcome the constant tempta- 
tion to sacrifice spirit to sense, which, in fact, his theme 
quite generally compels him to do. But, granting the very 
most that can be claimed, it can convey at best but a 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 273 

merely moral lesson, or express possibly some distant 
prophecy or dim allegory of revealed wisdom." 

* * What do you say, then, of historic and landscape paint- 
ing?" she asked. 

** Simply this," he replied, **that it is either untrue or 
uninteresting. Secular history in itself is extremely 
monotonous, save when it may serve for the enforcement 
and illustration of the facts of religious history. Like a 
landscape study, it can have little intrinsic merit, or excite 
little independent interest. The chief use of both is to 
make tone and background for the data of revelation, like 
an accompaniment in music. Examine, for instance, as I 
have done," he continued, ''the great Passions and the 
Madonnas, and you will not fail to observe that it is devo' 
tional ardor which has given an almost superhuman refine- 
ment of expression, an intensity of feeling, a depth of soul, 
a fervor of aspiration, nowhere else to be found, and a 
touch of living reality which makes itself felt in the ex^ 
quisite finish of form and glowing warmth of color." 

*'I am so crude," said Miss Newell, "I need to think of 
these things." 

*'If you would learn to paint," saidJSerr Schroder, ''or 
even to know what painting is, you must study the master- 
pieces in Rome. The genius of the place there will whisper 
the open secret of art to you." 

"I fancy," said she, "I should need you for my inter- 
preter, for I confess I am such a barbarian that after three 
days of the most diligent sight-seeing there, and interesting 
and grand as everything was, I was on the whole dis- 
appointed. I like Berlin far better." 

Herr Schroder only raised his eyebrows, sighed, shook 
his head slowly, and shrugged his shoulders significantly 
in reply. 

In the course of the winter Miss Newell frequently 



274 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

thought of this conversation, and had repeatedly sought to 
continue it, but always in vain. 

'*Ah, Fraulein," Herr Schroder replied one day, *' these 
things are so deep and sacred with me ! Art and religion 
are one and inseparable. I am a painter because I was 
first a believer ; and how can I ever hope to make you, who 
have no faith, understand me? These things need the in- 
sight of sympathy. Yet, if I could think that you had ever 
experienced some — ^yes, any — intense and absorbing feel- 
ing, deep enough to break up and mold anew your whole 
soul, and make life and death seem indifferent save as they 
might minister to the attainment of its object, then I might 
hope to make intelligible to you the devotion which both 
religion and art should inspire/' 

*' Excuse me if I have seemed to ask a confidence which 
I could not give in return," Miss Newell replied, with a 
stern effort to be calm. 

When Herr Schroder left her that day, the old heart- 
soreness which she fancied was well-nigh healed, returned. 
"He, too, finds me cold and unfeeling," she thought. **I 
seem to myself to have a heart of proud flesh ; to others it 
seems a stone. There is no danger of betraying my secret 
when everything I do belies my very soul. But yet, why 
did he speak of such a sympathy, if he did not suspect 
ground for it in me? Can it be hidden nowhere? No 
confidant or confessor in the world could ever draw it from 
me. If it had never found utterance, I might hope one 
day to be happy again ; but now, Memory and Love ! is 
there no escape from your power? Must I face the only 
issue which remains for those who suffer what can neither 
be cured nor endured ? " 

When her .reflections grew calmer, she determined to de- 
vote all her strength to the study of painting. If it led her 
toward the Church of Rome, or into it — yes, or even into a 
convent as a bride of Christ — what mattered it? Her 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 275 

^prejudices against Catholicism were probably bred of igno- 
rance, and, if she could only find nepenthe there, all might 
be well again. 

So she pored over the lives of the great masters, and 
made large collections of photographs and engravings, and 
studied every accessible painting of note in the city, spent 
a week at Leipsic, and would have gone to Rome despite 
the lateness of the season but for the reiterated protests of 
her instructor. Her toil was as unremitting as her zeal 
was ill-directed and impulsive. She worked with the in- 
considerate and impetuous haste that only those yield to 
who are at cross-purposes with themselves. She had sud- 
denly resolved to make art fill the place of social enjoy- 
ment, friends, country, family, and even of love and re- 
ligion. She found great solace in a few sketches she had 
designed and executed with much care with the pencil, and 
which she hoped soon to be competent to attempt in oil. 
Women more than men always reproduce themselves in 
art, and no wonder that she found a kind of self-ministra- 
tion which was almost sacred in this employment. As she 
gained power to realize and objectify her own sorrow, it 
became less poignant. This she might do with safety, for, 
even if other eyes than her own ever beheld her work, they 
could not interpret her hearts Now she felt that she was 
on the only road which could lead her again to perfect 
mental and emotional sanity. 

Meanwhile she had received frequent letters from Mr. 
Meechum. They informed her of all the educational gossip 
afloat in Ashton, and of the waning fortunes of her institu- 
tion. His were the only communications she received save 
from relatives and her vice-principal, and they were all 
answered promptly. She recounted to him her university 
experience, described the sights she had seen in her travels, 
and even her acquaintance with Herr Schroder. Against 
the influence of the latter, Mr. Meechum felt it his duty to 



276 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

warn her most solemnly and emphatically. He had heard 
that Jesuits assumed every dis^ise to win proselytes to 
Rome. Her instructor was probably no artist, but a priest. 
Thus spring slowly passed, and summer approached. 
Herr Schroder came twice a week, and was very greatly 
pleased with the progress and zeal of his pupil. 

* * If you had begun earlier, and had had good instruction, 
you might perhaps have made an artist, after all," he ex- 
claimed, with much ill-disguised surprise, as with a sudden 
burst of confidence she one day showed him some of her 
unfinished sketches. * 'Perhaps you will be able to under- 
stand me yet some day," he said, with beaming delight. 

**And why not now?" said Miss Newell, impulsively. 

The painter looked at her with a long, earnest, inquiring 
gaze, till she blushed, and stopped to pick up a fallen 
sketch. 

* * Ah ! " he said, .with a smile. * ' You American women 
are such materialists and so world-wise, and have such a 
business way about everything, that I have been much 
afraid of you. I think I should like -to tell you everything. 
Yet," he added slowly, ** these things cannot be so well 
told as seen and felt by intimate friendship. Such friend- 
ship, I begin to think, I could enjoy with you." 

'*I fear that it would be selfish in me to accept it, and 
that you would be sadly disappointed in me," slie said, de- 
murely. **I must add more," she continued, after a pause 
and with much effort — ''that all the friendship which can 
spring from common sympathy in the matters of which we 
have conversed will be more grateful to me than perhaps 
even you can imagine. But I can never receive or give 
anything more." 

Thenceforth they understood each other, and the former 
reserve between them was gone. She saw him only as 
before, and, when the hour of instruction was ended, he 
took his departure yet more promptly than formerly. But 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 277 

now they could speak freely. She gathered incidentally 
the story of his life, and felt safe in pitying his lonely and 
unfortunate lot, and in indulging her growing admiration 
of the faith that could minister such overflowing happiness 
to a life which had been filled only with unrealizable ideals, 
deferred hopes, and impossible ambitions. 

So reassured had she been by her instructor's manifest 
satisfaction with the unfinished sketches she had shown 
him, that she at length undertook to finish two of them, 
which she deemed the best, in oil; and, when they were 
done, no eye but her own had seen them. She had such a 
growing sensQ, of their imperfections that they were soon 
locked away in the closet, save now and then, when visitors 
were not expected, she found satisfaction in bringing them 
forth from their hiding-place, till they had become the 
theme of the meditation of many a lonely hour. 

One had for its background the high citadel and battered 
walls of Megara, which rose darkly and massively against 
the clear eastern sky, faintly tinged with the purple dawn, 
while the waning moon still cast long, pale shadows from 
the west. A grassy knoll to the right was covered by the 
tents of the Cretan army, all now wrapped in silent slum- 
ber. In the foreground, by the door of the royal tent, 
stood King Minos, without sandals or helmet, hastily 
wrapped in his mantle. In the hand that held the folds of 
his garment he grasped a sheathed sword, and the other 
was extended in a violent gesture of disgust and repulsion. 
Scylla stood before him, her father's purple lock, which 
the oracle had declared the Palladium of the besieged city, 
lying at her feet. Her hair was bound by a broad, golden 
fillet, the front of the upper rim arched into a diadem 
which proclaimed her royal birth. At the extreme right 
stood slaves with precious treasures from her father's 
palace. She had seen and loved from afar, and had stolen 
forth to offer father, friends, home, country, aU she was 



278 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

able to conceive the man of her choice might desire, only 
to find herself despised, abhorred, and rejected. Mingled 
rage, guilt, and despair, without fear or remorse, flamed in 
her face. Her hands were clinched, her attitude full of 
defiance, and her hair, still carefully smoothed above the 
coronet, below seemed coiling into forms which resembled 
the shining tresses of the furies. Love in an instant turned 
into implacable hate. 

In the other picture a broad, square tower rose above 
the walls of a crumbling old castle, from which through an 
open casement leaned the *'lily maid of Astolat" — Elaine. 
AU the environments were roughly finished, and Miss 
Newell had devoted all her care to the central figures. 
Below, Lancelot, his face pale and thin from the long ill- 
ness through which she had so tenderly and faithfully 
nursed him, was putting spur to his steed without even an 
adieu, with ''rough discourtesy to break or blunt her pas- 
sion. ' ' The shield she had so long guarded hung upon his 
arm. She had scoured all its old dints so brightly that the 
soft light of the setting sun was reflected from it into her 
face as fully as when 

*' First she placed it where morning's earliest ray 
Might strike it and awake her -with its gleam.'* 

The knight's brow was stern, and his lips compressed, 
and he was in the act of tearing from the old shield the 
*'red sleeve bordered with pearls" which he had worn in 
his last and greatest tourney as her token. Her face was 
pale and thin. Since first 

" . . . . she lifted up her eyes, 
And loved him with that love which was her doom,*' 

no deeper anguish had pierced her heart than now. Not 
even when, as the favor he begged her to ask, she besought 
that she might have his love and be his wife, and when. 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 279 

because it could not be, she swooned with anguish. Now 
it was a calm, deeper climax of sorrow that dimly dis- 
cerned, as from afar its own balm. Her lips were parted 
with an expression no less sweet than sad, which seemed 
to welcome love and death alike. Her hands were clasped 
upon the silken case she had braided, and her eyes, though 
fixed upon the high plume of the knight, seemed to look 
vacantly far beyond to their future meeting, when, in the 
chambers of the false queen who had renounced him, he 
should pluck her letter from her clay-cold hand and read — 

**I loved you, and my love had no return, 

And, therefore, my true love has been my death," 

and pause to leave a kiss upon her lips and a tear upon 
her brow. Such a look was on her face as holy pilgrim- 
women wear when they pause in barren places and look 
upon a cross. 

One day, when she was idly gazing at these pictures, 
her instructor announced himself so suddenly that she 
had no time to conceal them; and, when he entered her 
work-room, they were at once discovered. Without observ- 
ing her discomfiture, he examined them carefully, pointing 
out defects she had and others she had not observed^ 

**But,'* he said, at last, giving way to his enthusiasm, 
**they are wonderful for your practice, especially the scene 
from Tennyson. I once sought myself for such a subject, 
and even made a sketch of poor Vanessa in an ideal scene. 
Profane themes are well for studies, but there is no in- 
spiration in them. I almost think you might now succeed 
with a Madonna. Even this face," pointing to Elaine, 
** would be remarkable as a Dolorosa. But do you observe 
how much these faces resemble each other, and how like 
both are to expressions I have often seen lurking in your 
own face? You should vary the type and subject. Be- 
sides, you are attempting too much. I must insist on a 



280 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

vacation. In a few weeks it will be safe to visit Rome. 
That must be the next step in your studies. You are far 
better prepared to go than I thought." 

A few days later she set out. It was a somewhat senti- 
mental journey. She lingered awhile at Lucerne, and again 
at Geneva. Saddened hearts find comfort and companion- 
ship in mountains. The clear and pure air, the silence, and 
solitude, and grandeur, soothed and calmed without ex- 
hilarating. She had no desire for adventuresome ascents, 
and felt no impulse to copy or paint, but was content to 
contemplate, and enjoy, and write in her journal. Yet 
Herr Schroder was right about Nature. The great metrop- 
olis of art whither she was bound must be far more refining 
and regenerating than it ; and oh ! regeneration — that, after 
all, was what she needed. In the Eternal City she would 
find the true home of her soul ; and she wrote in her diary : 

"I will taste the lotus no longer, lest no power of hel- 
lebore avail to help me hence. I will obey the call ! ' ' and 
two days later she was comfortably quartered in Rome. 

Guide-book in hand, wandering at random in her im- 
petuous and desultory way with a fresh and insatiable 
curiosity, she had, during the month that elapsed before 
Herr Schroder arrived, become quite familiar with the most 
obvious sights and sentiments of the place. Here she found 
that which absorbed her into self-forgetfulness. Alone as 
she was, she felt the need of no society. Here, too, was the 
independence she long had sought. Here she would spend 
all her remaining days. The old life must be forgotten. 
She would break from it completely. This would be a new 
birth, indeed. She owed no duties to her grandmother, 
whose own children were anxious to minister to her com- 
fort, and, as for her institute, it had declined in popularity, 
and was mortgaged for taxes. So, at least, Mr. Meechum 
had written. Possibly he might be willing to make her an 
offer for it. Of course, she must lose heavily, but perhaps 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 281 

more heavily if she delayed. By the laws of the State he, 
as school superintendent, would soon control it independ- 
ently of her. Again it might revive and become more use- 
ful in his hands than it ever could be under her manage- 
ment. A few months later, therefore, it became his for a 
small sum, and, when all was done, Miss Newell was some- 
what surprised to observe that his letters abruptly ceased, 
leaving even her last inquiries unanswered. This roused 
for a time some feeling of indignation and chagrin, but,, 
when it subsided, she became moralist enough to write in 
her journal: 

**Even ungrateful neglect and indignities, which are 
among the ills we have to bear, may be endured, if, like 
Dr. Pangloss, we reflect how much more grievous they 
might have been. We may learn some wisdom from Dr. 
Pangloss, absurd as he is.'* 

She had counted the days till her instructor's arrival. 
She had hardly realized before how large a place he filled 
in her thoughts. She really longed to see him. She had 
studied what he liked, and imagined his opinions on many 
things which she had seen. She had sketched but little, 
but had seen and pondered much. She would confide in 
him without reservation when he came. He could explain 
everything, and she had saved up so many questions to ask 
him! 

When they met, she was not greatly embarrassed to find 
herself blushing in his presence, while she fancied that the 
vivacity and sprightliness, which she did not try to repress, 
made him more deeply serious than ever before. 

Herr Schroder was at home here. He knew the digni- 
taries of the Church, and the artists, and was favorably 
known by them. He explained to his pupil the sjonbols of 
the ritual, and the paraphernalia of the festivals, and intro- 
duced her to several of the painters, and to a distinguished 
prelate, and found her a teacher of Italian. They saw 



282 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

mncli of each other now, and took frequent strolls, and 
even saw the Coliseum by moonlight together, and her 
journal was forgotten. 

**What more auspicious time and place," said he, as 
they stood upon a huge hewed block of stone by the ruins, 
**to make a great life-choice? Here is human power 
crumbling and decaying like Babel, confusion, doubt, secu- 
larism, temporality, Protestant schism, and iconoclasm. 
There" — pointing to the dome of St. Peter's — "is the type 
of spiritual unity and aspiration, a mere shadow which 
will fade and vanish like these ruins, but which will leave 
behind it a precious immortality of influence. Its very 
ground-plan, a cross, will make its ruins more eloquent of 
suffering endurance, the capital virtue of Christianity, than 
its perfection can ever be. Oh!" he continued, with in- 
creasing vehemence, *'what has science done or can it ever 
do for faith? Nothing but correct her proof -texts and 
revise her illustrations, and reword her dogmas; but art, 
from the first, has made religion a power in the world. 
The Muses give higher motives and better comforts than 
material possessions or knowledge can ever do. Art alone 
can realize for holy ends all the traditions of imperial 
Rome, and make her the center whence a new and higher 
civilization shall spread over the world." 

*'You know I have chosen," Miss Newell broke in, with 
deep emotion. 

* ' But do you know that, if you choose Christian art, you 
enter upon a via dolorosa which will never lead you to 
either wealth or fame?" asked he. 

**I have renounced possessions, country, a life of ease, 
perhaps some renown, my own will, yes, and my very heart 
itself," she said, with tearless eyes but with a trembling 
voice. * * What more ? I think sometimes I could do almost 
anything in art which you would advise and direct. I feel 
that art may by-and-by give me something to cling to, to 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 283 

lean upon; and something — something in heaven or on 
earth — I must have!" 

She covered her face with her hands, and Herr Schroder 
gazed long and almost tenderly upon her, and only said: 

**Do not despair; have patience; it is the secret way to 
genius. You may be accounted worthy to serve the holiest. 
The spirit of power may come to you at any moment. Men 
are still inspired here." 

They walked home slowly and silently. The next day 
they were teacher and scholar again, and talked of work. 

"It is about time your apprenticeship should end," said 
Herr Schroder. * ' You must try to learn to trust your own 
creative power. Put your taste, your creed, your heart, 
yourself, in short, into some original subject. Think it out 
ceu^efuUy, and express it slowly and patiently, using me 
for details. Drawing is your best point. It is in coloring 
that I can help you most." 

After much deliberation, and with the same unconven- 
tional candor of sentiment and motive that so often char- 
acterized her action, she chose an old, old theme, so spun 
over with dogmas, and hedged about by traditional forms 
of treatment, that to one ambitious merely of artistic fame 
it would have seemed beset with too great dangers and 
difficulties. It was the Holy Night of Nights — the supreme 
hour of motherhood, when love becomes complete, and 
every first-born child seems the offspring of Heaven — 
Immanuel. 

An arched grotto in a crumbling limestone rock had often 
been a noonday retreat and a theme for pencil-sketches, 
in the glen at her "Western home. In such a shelter, slight- 
ly improved by a fore-work of stones and branches, upon a 
bed of dried straw and grass, lay a young mother clasping 
a child, *'all meanly wrapped," to her breast. The face 
of the child was not seen, hardly the outline of its form, 
but all the beatitudes seemed to rest upon the face of the 



284 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

mother. The dawn was scarcely gray in the east, but a 
l)right light, softer than that of the sun, lay warm and 
fresh from an unknown source upon the scene — a type of 
the new revelations and insights of love. A male figure 
knelt near the mother with face averted, but evidently 
absorbed in contemplation, less carefully finished than the 
rest, with slight constraint and more affectation, evidently 
mingled with a deep ardor of devotion. Before the outer 
edge of the shelter paused a yet more rudely-clad herds- 
man, with a face strangely eloquent of meaning. It told 
that these intruders were strangers, far from home, in need 
of sympathy, perhaps of help. Pity, and surprise, and 
reverence were there, but above all a tender sadness, which, 
when it was once caught and felt by the observer, seemed 
to dim the splendor of the light, and make the pile of fagots 
at one side suggestive of a sacrificial altar, and the faint 
shadow that fell prone and uncertain upon the huddled 
sheep behind him, of a cross. Both gazed upon the mother, 
and she, unconscious of all — even her child — seemed ab- 
sorbed in the vision of some higher presence, unseen save 
by her. The lines of care and suffering, and of present 
pain, were too deeply worn in her brow to be effaced, but 
they only made more expressive the tranquil calm and 
deep joy that now filled and completely satisfied her soul, 
and made every accumulated ill and shame of life forgotten 
in the supreme joy of motherhood. 

Such was the ideal that gradually took shape in Miss 
Neweirs mind, and toward the expression of which she 
wrought with great diligence. She studied faces and 
groupings, and gathered suggestions from almost every col- 
lection in the city. She was with her teacher more than 
ever before. Never had she felt such constant need of him. 
Never had she longed so earnestly for greater skill to ex- 
press her conceptions. Only the encouragement of his 
enthusiasm kept her from despair of her own powers; and 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 285 

yet, upon the whole, she had never found so much pleasure 
in any task, and the praises of her mentor had never been 
so warm and valued. She knew he was pleased with her 
choice of theme, and he had found but little fault with her 
conception of it. She had Hoped to finish it before the 
festivities of Christmas, that she might find needed rest 
and recreation in these. 

One day when it was nearly complete, Herr Schroder 
rapped at her door much earlier than usual. He found her 
already at her work. 

*'I have been suddenly called away for a few days," he 
said, in an unusually earnest and intense manner ; " I could 
not go until I had spoken to you about a matter which you 
may perhaps easily anticipate, and which has occupied my 
thoughts especially of late." 

Miss Newell 's heart was in her throat in an instant. She 
could not trust her voice, but only motioned him to sit. 

* ' You must have felt in this last work of yours, ' ' he said, 
after a long pause, *'the deep impulse which sometimes 
seems outside of and more mighty than self, so that you 
appear merely to look on and see yourself work. This 
larger life, which men call enthusiasm, love, genius — forms 
of inspiration of the Holy Ghost, all of them — ^you must 
have felt?" 

"I have felt it," she said, slowly. *'At least, I love my 
work; but not purely for itself — for something else. My 
former life will linger in my thoughts in such a sad, sweet 
way, that I often wonder whether I should enjoy more or 
less here if I could forget it entirely." 

'*You did well," he rejoined, *'to renounce and try at 
least to forget the past before you came here. But, in 
doing so, you must have had higher thoughts and feelings 
to sustain you and make all ills seem blessings in disguise. * * 

"Yet," she continued, "I often feel that somehow selfish- 
ness is at the bottom of all, and am often conscious of the 



286 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

need and absence of all you describe, and almost sink for 
the want of something to cling to for support. ' ' 

''Ah! that," said Herr Schroder, gravely, *'is the need 
of every human heart, and it is the chief business of all 
mental culture to discover what that something is. Do 
you not believe that the Muses are aU servants of the Holy 
Ghost?" 

*'No doubt," she replied, ''but we must love the divine 
through the human. Is that not the highest precept of 
art? Christ seems so far away! The theologians have 
almost resolved him back into ineffable God." 

"But," said he, "we have his representatives — ^the 
clergy, the Church, and its holy offices. Yet it is true we 
need more. I have felt most deeply the need of companion- 
ship and sympathy in my solitary life." 

"We cannot live without love. We need not disguise or 
deny it," she said, with a slight tremor in her voice, while 
her eyes, gazing into the distance, showed her thoughts to 
be far away. 

"Perhaps," he rejoined, "you and I have reason to feel 
this more than most. In this common need, we have much 
ground for mutual understanding. You caa best judge of 
this, however, for you know far more of my life than I of 
yours. Yet you were wisest in concealing and trying to 
forget the past. Now you can help me to a new life. ' ' 

' ' I am bound to you by debts of gratitude, which, I fear, 
nothing less than that could ever repay. Would that I 
dared to hope it were possible ! ' ' she added, after a pause. 

"I cannot explain to you the long reserve I have felt in 
speaking of this, ' ' he said, ' ' and now it is only because the 
voice of Heaven commands no further delay that I am 
here." His manner was more impassioned and fervent, 
and he drew very close to her side as he said : 

"The Divine will has decreed for us the holiest of all 
earthly vows. Shall we obey?" 



A LEAP-YEAR EOMANCB 287 

*'We cannot do otherwise," she said. *'I, too, have long 
wished for a higher consecration to art, yes, prayed for it 
often. If you could show me how it is attained, oh, how 
light my weary griefs would become ! ' ' Yet the tears were 
gathering in her eyes. 

*'And I!" he said, almost rapturously, scarcely heeding 
what she said. ' ' The thought of this has led me on almost 
from the first. My prayers are answered. You have given 
me strength. And now," he continued, suddenly clasping 
her hand in his own, ''when, through the holy rites of the 
Church, we are dead to the world and to each other, and 
the sacred veil of the bride of Christ has fallen " 

She started up with a sudden cry of horror and agony 
as his meaning flashed upon her. She had thought only 
of a higher devotion to art, which was to lift her above the 
ordinary griefs of humanity, and had clung to Herr 
Schroder as the minister to that end. He, enthusiast as he 
was, had thought only of mutual vows of retirement into 
the holy seclusion of monastic and cloistered life; or pos- 
sibly the flames of love and of religious fervor were so 
commingled in his soul that he had by turns mistaken each 
for the other, and, by the influence of Miss Newell's ac- 
quaintance, had become conscious of being drawn now to 
thoughts of marriage — ^now to purposes of higher religious 
consecration. The latter motive had prevailed, or the latter 
mood chanced this hour to be paramount. To be sure, his 
words had vaguely suggested such thoughts to her mind 
before, but they had always been dismissed without serious 
consideration ; for, if he desired to renounce the world, she 
could see no reason for any wish ort his part that she should 
do the same. 

This time the shock was too great for her exhausted sys- 
tem. With a low moan of agony, she fainted in her chair. 
Possibly her teacher suspected the cause of her distress. 



288 RECREATIONS OP A PSYCHOLOGIST 

At all events, when she was restored, others were over her 
and he was gone. 

The next day he called, but he could not see her. The 
morning following she left Rome, and in two days was in 
her old quarters at Berlin, which had chanced to remain' 
vacant during her absence. 

She was warmly received by her old friends, who had 
been greatly concerned because nothing had been heard 
from her since her solitary departure for Rome. They 
hastened to place in her hands a few letters which had 
lain there for some time till her new address should be 
known. Among these was one from Professor Moors. She 
recognized the handwriting, but, although nearly pros- 
trated with fatigue and exhaustion, opened and read it 
with perfect composure. 

The professor had some hope of establishing a home of 
his own in the spring, the letter stated. He wished a fe^s' 
tasteful pictures, copies in oil, if they could be procured, 
of some of the great masters. His house had several rooms 
somewhat like those in her old home in Springtown. It 
might aid her to keep this in mind. A few general speci- 
fications as to price and character were added, leaving a 
wide range of choice to her own taste. 

This was a commission which it would require several 
days to execute, but she set about it at once, and it was 
soon done. 

During her previous residence here she had, through the 
family of the house, made the acquaintance of several visit- 
ing Sisters from the convent of the Holy Cross, and had 
felt strongly drawn toward them. The placid repose of 
soul which they seemed to enjoy, their tranquil and yet 
beneficent lives, charmed and hallowed by an atmosphere 
of peace and subdued satisfaction and joy, had from the 
first provoked her curiosity. She now met them again, 
and requested to see them whenever they came to the house. 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 289 

In the quiet days that succeeded it was inevitable that 
certain trains of thought and purpose that before occupied 
her mind should be revived and reviewed. Those first 
weeks in Berlin, when Herr Schroder had been to her only 
a teacher, seemed now to have been almost happy. What, 
after all, if he had been in the right ! It might be that all 
the wounds of earth could be healed and forgotten in pious 
seclusion and meditation. Her life had been indeed un- 
usually solitary. There might be a divine purpose in that. 
Of course, intellectually, she was conscious that she had 
no proclivities toward Catholicism. Many of its dogmas 
she knew only as noxious and almost profane. But an 
asylum from the rough, cold world, the opportunity for 
spiritual advancement and confidence, a true confessional 
of soul, perhaps — these seemed invested with a wondrous 
and growing charm. Here, too, she might find occupation. 
She could still paint, and find consecration and inspiration, 
and live in the midst of insights and motives that would 
suggest and interpret the highest subjects; while for her 
leisure hours there remained devotion, study, works of 
charity. Her pictures, too, would sell for a small sum, no 
doubt — enough, with what was yet left of her inheritance, 
for the deposit-fund required at the end of her novitiate, 
before she took the final vows. At last she was resolved; 
the pictures were sold, and their price — far less, she knew, 
than their real value — laid by. She began to feel herself, 
in reality, dead to the world, to its common pleasures and 
pains. How kind was Providence to lead her heart, and 
at last her feet, to a home, sweet home, for her tired soul ! 
Some weeks were to elapse before the initial, and many 
before the final, rites of consecration, by which she, with 
several others, was to be set apart from the world. On the 
morrow she had decided to accept the kind invitation of 
the Sisters, and to occupy a room with them in the convent 
dormitory, and a seat at their commons-table. 



290 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

The morrow was Christmas. It was one of those rare 
days of warm and perfect splendor which sometimes smile 
down upon old Berlin in early winter through Italian skies, 
and which, whenever they come, make a holiday of Nature's 
own setting apart, for all who have or can beg or steal 
leisure to enjoy it. 

Miss Newell 's sleep had been sound and untroubled. 
Her great elevation of feeling made her the more calm. 
This morning she spent nearly an hour in devotional medi- 
tation and prayer, exercises almost new to her, and which 
added greatly to the depth of her joy and peace. 

The members of the household where she lived had sent 
in a neat little bouquet of flowers, with a card on which 
was written Prosit zwm Weihnachtsfest ! and she was just 
taking out the plain but neat garments she was to wear, 
when a caUer was announced in the parlor below. He had 
sent no name or card. She went down at once, and found 
herself face to face with Professor Moors ! For an instant 
neither spoke. There was no form of salutation. This 
time she was more calm than he. She observed that he 
looked jaded and anxious. He began speaking rapidly: 

**I left Ashton three weeks ago, traveling with Mr. and 
Mrs. Elmore. She has shown me long ago the great wrong 
I have done you. I have come to Europe to find you and 
to tell you that I have loved you from the first.'* 

She suddenly raised her hand deprecatingly, but it fell 
again. 

**You are not married, then?'' she asked, after a pause, 
with a tone of simple surprise, yet very calmly. 

''I have never had a thought of it," he said, with great 
emphasis and more surprise, ''which did not lead my mind 
and very heart toward you." 

He paused a moment, but she said nothing, and he con- 
tinued : 

**I had foolish and cruel motives. I thought you proud, 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 291 

unfeeling, wrongly ambitious, and I fought long and bit- 
terly against my own heart. How little I knew you then! 
I was proud and heartless. Now I am ready, longing for 
any sacrifice, any atonement. Nay, more — I feel that my 
life henceforth will be a poor, worthless thing if it cannot 
be linked with yours." 

She stood drearily, almost breathlessly there, while these 
words, that would once have thrilled her heart with un- 
speakable joy, seemed now like the echo of a far-off sor- 
row. 

**Have you ceased to love mef he exclaimed, with 
trembling voice. 

* * I fear so — worthily, ' ' she said, slowly. 

* * If you could see my heart But no, I will not speak 

of my suffering. Great as it has been, yours has been far 
deeper, I know. Nay, do not draw back. I know far more 
of you than you suspect — ^know it honorably, as a man and 
a lover has some right. I dare even appeal to your own 
heart. Do not answer hastily. Let me leave you now to 
take counsel with your own thoughts. ' ' He turned toward 
the door. 

"You are rigFt," she said, yet more calmly. *'I must 
not listen to you. It is Heaven that has parted us. Oh, 
this is all a dream! We may, we must take time,'* she' 
burst out impetuously after an instant's pause. 

* ' Ah ! if you wish to humble or test me, it is perhaps but 
just,'^ he said. *'Yes, impose anything, any task whatso- 
ever." 

^^As you have done to me? Not for worlds!" she inter- 
posed, with deep feeling. ''But you did not, could not 
know!" 

*'I knew nothing. I misinterpreted all from the first — 
till a month ago," he replied, **when, thanks to Mrs. El- 
more, my eyes were opened." 

** Perhaps we need not speak more of it," she said. *'It 



292 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

can do no good. I cannot, dare not, abandon the life I 
have chosen. The vows are already in my heart. It would 
be worse than weakness to look back.** 

* * But these plans cannot be deliberate. Is there no hope 
— ^none ? * ' 

** There is none/' she said, with deep emotion, and with 
manifest effort to be firm. **I belong to my friends but 
for a few hours, and after that I hope never to leave the 
society of the Sisters I have found here.** 

The professor lingered a moment, and then, with a sud- 
den impulse, left the house abruptly and without a word. 

When he was gone. Miss Newell sank into a chair, quite 
overpowered by a sense of utter weakness and helplessness, 
such as she had never felt before. *'Once,'* she thought, 
***this would have been an hour of supreme bliss. Once, 
too, when friends called me hard and cold, I might have 
steeled my heart against every thought of love, but now 
I can only — ^what? Pray? Yes.** And she prayed silently 
in anguish of soul as she sat there, her face covered with 
her hands; prayed that her love might be all refined, and, 
ceasing to clasp things of earth, might be absorbed in things 
heavenly and divine; that she might follow duty with an 
eye more single and a consecration more unreserved; that 
she might learn from the life of the dear, loving Jesus Him- 
self how to find ''all the joy that lies in a full self- 
sacrifice. * * 

She had sat thus she knew not how long, when the door 
opened and Mrs. Elmore entered unannounced, and threw 
her arms about Miss Newell's neck in her old warm impul- 
sive manner, almost before she could rise, and began at 
once : 

''There, my dearest Josie, I am not in the least sur- 
prised, not the least in the world. I always knew it would 
be so. Why, he loved you from the first, just as I said, 
and you thought I dreamed it, or else lied, and that he 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 293 

cared for my niece. You wicked girl ! ' ' and she embraced 
and kissed her yet more demonstratively than before. 

Miss Newell raised her hand deprecatingly and began : 

''Do you, then, not know '^ 

''Know? Yes, everything," interrupted Mrs. Elmore, 
now almost fiercely; "but you don't mean one word of it. 
If you do, upon my soul, you are crazy, and you shall not 
leave this house ! If Heaven sent you to a convent, it sent 
me across the sea to prevent your going. It is the same 
old pride in a new and more dangerous form than ever. 
Now it would complete its work in entirely crushing out 
your heart. You love him, and if you can't see that God 
wants you to make this man happy — to save him from a 
heavier and longer grief, perhaps, than even yours has 
been — you had better seek a hospital for your soul ! Why," 
she continued, after a pause, "he has not had a thought 
that was not yours, but he feared you did not truly love 
him. Your cold manner he thought was heartlessness. 
Now he knows you love him, and you cannot escape him if 
you try. He cared for your school, and when it all ran 
down in Mr. Meechum's hands, he bought it himself, and 
reorganized it much on your old plan. Your old Spring- 
town home, too, he purchased a year ago, and now it is 
refitted and furnished, and ready. If he seems to have 
presumed too much on your love, that is all my fault. ' ' 

"If I thought it was pride " said Miss Newell, ab- 
sently, after another long pause. 

"Of course it is. Willful, wicked, stubborn pride, and 
oh, what a dreadful direction it has taken, and how you 
must have indulged it!" said Mrs. Elmore. "If you can 
subdue it now, it will be a real regeneration. The culture 
of all the religions can do no more than that." 

"You are my best friend. I have done you great 
wrong !'^ exclaimed Miss Newell, now throwing her arms 
about Mrs. Elmore's neck. "If you could only know how 



294 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

I have suffered!'' and Mrs. Elmore became positive that 
she did know all about it as she felt the hot tears fall upon 
her cheek, but this time she was silent. 

**How shall I tell the Sisters?" Miss Newell asked at 
length. 

**"Tell them everything, and they will give you the kiss 
of peace and bid you 'Godspeed!' " was the reply. *'But 
there is another with whom you must break your word 
first. Sit here and grow calm while I step over to the hotel 
ajid call him," and she hastily left the room. 

In a few minutes the professor entered, almost timidly. 
Each looked into the other's eyes an instant, and then she 
was in his arms. 

She was the first to speak. 

*'Do you know how my love has wavered and wandered 
— ^how much pride and selfishness you will have to bear 
with?" 

*'I should be cruel, indeed, if I were as unjust to you as 
are your own thoughts." 

**What first convinced you that I really loved you?" 
she asked next. 

''Mrs. Elmore made me feel it at last," he replied; "and 
then I came by chance the other day upon a picture you 
sold, which contained my portrait as a herdsman, so won- 
derfully and tenderly finished from memory." 

She blushed deeply, and he continued : 

*'You will see that and two others I have been able to 
find and identify after some pains, in your own old room 
in the old house in Springtown — ^soon, I hope." 

She could not speak, but she rested her head upon his 
shoulder. Such absorbing peace and joy filled her heart 
so long estranged from its highest good, but now satisfied 
and atoned. At last she turned her face toward his, and, 
with a smile faint but full of happiness, said: "I must 
impose one condition. You do not ask me to stand by my 



A LEAP-YEAR ROMANCE 295 

old letter to you? I do not like that. You must go off 
and begin in true fashion and write me some ardent love- 
letters. Then, perhaps, if you should ask me to say — in 
two months, in Springtown — that will be next leap-year- 
day — I might have no objection/' 

Of course, Mrs. Elmore dropped in again before an 
hour had passed. The professor almost fancied she seemed 
a trifle disappointed to see, as she did at a glance, that her 
services were needed no longer. She has since said that 
the disposition of each was so willful that her anxiety was 
vastly relieved when she saw them sitting 

Well, kind reader, no matter how — for now the writer 
may as well confess to so modest a thing as being the hero 
of his own tale, which is every word a true one. 

We began rather late, but we have been happier than a 
younger and less experienced couple ever were or could 
have been for nearly a year. We shall always celebrate 
leap-year-day. My wife must not see this little story till 
long after you have forgotten it — till we have been married 
just four years. Then I shall gather all these friends, if- 
God spares them, every one, and, when the best dinner I 
can afford is over, I shall read this tale to them, and then 
I know Mrs. Elmore will say, with great emphasis: *'You 
are quite right. It was all due to me. I foresaw it from 
the first. It was the most bothersome match I ever en- 
gaged in. Those are always the happiest. But the town- 
gossips — why, there is not one of them ever so much as 
dreamed why the wedding was leap-year-day to this day." 

And my wife will say in her quiet, modest way : * ' I was 
not made for a heroine, my dear ; and I am afraid that has 
spoiled your story. I was very headstrong, and enthusi- 
astic, and foolish, but now I fear I forgave you more easily 
than you deserved. However, the wrong-doing you have 
spun it all from was mine." 



296 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

I shall reply: **My dear, our marriage is one of mind 
as well as of heart and soul. You completely fill woman's 
sphere for me. There is nothing I would change in you. 
I was a little inconsiderate, and, on the whole, I think, 
perhaps, I ought to bear all the blame. The best philosophy 
of the domestic relation '' 

And then I know Josie's good-hearted but shockingly 
coarse grandmother (long may she live with us if she does 
not alter her will!) will interrupt me: 

** Children just bite right off. You'U quarrel yet who 
is the wisest. I'll allow you're quite a dab at story- writ- 
ing. But you've got one thing wrong. I alius knew 
Meechum was a scamp. I knew, too, you'd marry each 
other in the end all the time ; so just change that a bit, too, 
wliile you are about iti" 

And my little boy will be three then, and I mean he 
shall be able to say, "Yeap-year ith better 'an Kithmath, 
an' T'anksgivin', an' New- Year, all todether"; and if he 
should add, ''^But, Oh, papa, p'ease don't write any more 
long towies — I'm so sleepy!" then I am sure he, if all the 
rest of us have failed to do so, may touch a tender chord 
of sympathy in some reader's breast. 



VIII 

NOTE ON EABXY MEMORIES 

Most of the first fourteen years of my life were spent 
upon several farms in the hilly region of western Massa- 
chusetts. This home I revisited during all vacations of 
my course at the preparatory school, college and profes- 
sional school. Nearly every summer since, when I have 
been in the country, I have reverted to the region for at 
least a few weeks, and still retain possession of one of 
these old farms. Here I have given free vent to a number 
of fads. One summer I walked up and explored in rubber 
boots all the stream beds within a wide radius of Ashfield 
village; collected and, with expert help, labeled all the 
stones and rocks I could find. Another August I devoted 
to flowers, grasses and ferns, collecting about one hundred 
species of the latter alone. One season several weeks were 
devoted to climbing the hills, naming them, and marking 
directions, counting church spires, and tracing with the 
aid of a local antiquary nearly one hundred miles of old 
stone wall in town which marked the earliest partition of 
farms. Once I amused myself by tracing glacial scratches 
in the rocks and exploring the terminal moraines. Once, 
with an old lumber wagon, I drove around and asked every 
one I knew to let me explore his attic and thus collected 
about three hundred objects: from old looms, spinning 
wheels and primitive plows, to calashes, shoe buckles, 
pewter plates, foot and bed warmers, ancient school and 
hymn books, homespun frocks, pitchpipes and such other 

297 



298 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

mementos of ruder days as those with which Mr. George 
Sheldon has filled his fascinating museum at Deer field. 
These are now housed and catalogued in the basement of 
the academy building, where on Friday afternoons they 
yield a very modest income to the janitor, who is allowed 
to charge ten cents to all who desire to visit the collection. 
Another August I questioned old people concerning local 
history, visited sites of the old mills, cellar holes, apple 
orchards, and made out nearly two dozen family trees 
which show the sad decadence of this sturdy old Puritan 
stock. 

A few summers ago, however, I undertook as a vaca- 
tion diversion a more or less systematic exploration of all 
the farms I had ever known, noting on the spot everything 
remembered from early boyhood. I climbed in through 
the windows of abandoned houses and explored them from 
roof to cellar in quest of vestiges; sat alone sometimes for 
hours trying to recall vanishing traces and to identify ob- 
jects which I knew must have once been familiar. Thus 
during the month I noted between four and five thousand 
points, sometimes revisiting the same scene to observe the 
effects of recurrence, and from it all I gathered some 
general impressions of memory quite new to me, which it 
is my object here to note. 

Farm I was where I was bom and where the first two 
and one-half years of my life were spent. It contained 
about one hundred and twenty-five acres of very diversi- 
fied land, and although I had often driven past it (little of 
it was seen from the road), I had not entered the buildings 
in all that time, so that more than three-score years had inter- 
vened. I was allowed by the present tenant, who had occu- 
pied it ever since we left, absolute freedom within doors and 
without, and spent there many hours, notebook in hand, at 
various times. Often, as e.g., while gazing eastward 
toward a dense swampy forest, where even yet an occasional 



NOTE ON EARLY MEMORIES 299 

bear or deer is killed in winter, or when coming upon 
cherry trees near a ledge or visiting two large rocks beside 
which were two old maples, a feeling that I thought to be 
a glint of vague familiarity was experienced. On coming 
to a knoll upon a vast heap of stones near trees I found 
myself articulating *'why yes, of course, there was some- 
thing like that. ' ' On coming upon a bit of woodland with 
many large dark stones near the house this feeling was 
very strong, and I was suddenly reminded of an older girl 
cousin who seemed somehow lacking and due there, al- 
though I have no recollection that she ever sa,w this farm, 
yet on general principles she probably had. Several ex- 
periences of this class suggest to me that association is 
deeper and more indelible than conscious memory. So 
with the rocky end of a knoll came an almost imperative 
association of cows being milked by a woman. The present 
occupant stated that the barnyard used to include that 
point, and it has now been told me that our hired man 's wife 
used to milk. There was a very faint suggestion of a dis- 
continued lane from this point to the pasture, which I am 
told did exist. The sudden smell of catnip, the gloomi- 
ness of an old wall of very black stones, a deep well be- 
neath the kitchen, the abundant and peculiar moss on the 
ledges, were other things that brought a distinct sense of 
familiarity but no trace of anything usually called mem- 
ory. A deep wild gorge to the west of the level road, 
although quite hidden from it; the stumps of three old 
maples on the east some distance from the house ; the slight 
slope of the front yard and that of a neighbor's with a 
well-house, vaguely suggest reminiscence, but it is more a 
feeling of a strong and peculiar interest than any identi- 
fication with past experience. The only clear and distinct 
memory connected with this place, which I have always 
carried and often revived, is of a red upright wooden spout 
with a wheel attached, through which I poured water, and 



300 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

which to my great grief was left behind when we moved. 
As an older boy I used to question my parents about it, 
but they seemed to have forgotten what it was. I rum- 
maged the attic and shed, and finally found two red water 
spouts fastened together to which an old reel wheel had 
been nailed, thus triumphantly vindicating my memory. 

Thus out of all the very many objects and incidents that' 
were impressed upon a child's mind during the first two 
and one-half years of his life, almost nothing was definitely 
recalled. The inside of the house which was changed but 
little; a few vestiges of old furniture in the attic which 
we were said to have left; the long shed entirely un- 
changed; the barn; all these things abounding in objects 
of absorbing interest to childhood, time had almost com- 
pletely obliterated. Yet knowing well and having experi- 
enced delusions of memory I am positive that I cannot be 
mistaken in the repeated sense of reminiscence upon com- 
ing upon some of the features above noted. Phrases like 
*'why, so it was," **yes, to be sure," in some cases almost 
came to spontaneous vocal utterance at first, while in 
others, sitting and gazing slowly developed this sense. It 
was a hazy kind of beyond-the-woods feeling or a stony- 
hillside impression with an emotional tone of effort to 
climb it, and repeatedly with a strong desire to sit an hour 
or two in a spot to enjoy the rapport that I felt would 
come. Occasionally when I sat thinking of something very 
different or reading a book I had brought along, automatic 
side associations seemed to spring up. It was certainly not 
like other places, and it differed from them more than by 
the knowledge I had that I once lived there and any ex- 
pectant tension that fact might generate. I have little 
doubt but that if I had met that ensemble of landscape 
features unexpectedly in some far country I should have 
been struck by some reverberations of reminiscence per- 
haps akin to those Plato connected with d previous state of 



NOTE ON EARLY MEMORIES 301 

existence. The points of contact between my mind and the 
past at least did not take spacial form, but were upon such 
general impressionistic items as the gloomy blackness of 
the wall, the dreadfulness of the dense spruce and hem- 
lock woods in the east, the difficulty and perplexity of the 
stony and rocky places, the upward and downward slant 
of the small hills. The outdoor impressions were far more 
cogent than the barn or house or anything in them, and up 
and down directions of the rolling ground evoked a reaction 
so peculiar as to suggest that the experience of going up 
and down hill for a child of the age I was when that was 
my home left a lasting impression. 

These observations at any rate have raised in my mind 
the query whether or not experiences of that early age 
distinctly tend to lapse to vague and evanescent emotions. 
The influences of the environment at this very formative 
and plastic age of rapid brain change must have been 
great, and I cannot but believe that my psychic organiza- 
tion would have been quite different had I passed this 
period of my life upon a prairie. It may be that remote 
ancestral phylogenetic influences are related to such nebu- 
lous psychoses of memory somewhat as they themselves are 
related to the clear, detailed, conscious impressions arising 
from recent experience. Indeed we may opine that such 
vestiges may be the forms which our experience takes just 
as it is fading from consciousness and sinking below its 
threshold into the larger unconscious life, where instinct 
and the heart, which from their unfathomable depths dom- 
inate so much of our lives, hold their sway. Thus it is 
perhaps, "Weissmann to the contrary notwithstanding, that 
the experience of the individual tends to transform the 
race, somatic cells to affect germ cells, so as to determine 
the psychic disposition of offspring. It is, at any rate, 
not impossible that hereditary vibrations are simply, yet 
more vague and shadowy than, this all but lost psychic or 



302 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

neural stratum of my own soul, which faint as it now is 
must have had a high determining value. 

Perhaps an opposite theory is truer. At that stage I 
may have been a creature of sentiment, and sense and 
feeling may have been closely related. The emotional tone 
which colored all impressions may have been the organ of 
experience and there may have been no change in the 
psychic processes or even the nerve and brain cells, which 
mediated the experience of these years, but the later 
mentality of maturity may have simply grown over them, 
and the traffic of mind and life have followed these newer 
strata. In this case the vague impressions I had were 
recrudescences of baby stages of mind or what was unde- 
cayed of them, and there may have been none but a relative 
change in their position on the scale, if such there be, that 
separates reproduction from conscious individual experi- 
ence. 

Certain it is that I had here a rare opportunity in the 
very salient and permanent features unvisited during all 
the interval to look for conscious reminiscences. But to 
make the experiment absolutely conclusive I should have 
been brought up to believe that these years had been spent 
on one of two or more very different farms, each of which 
I should have explored to find which was the true one from 
those effects of expectant tension and peculiar interest 
which have always centered about this place, the effects of 
which under such circumstances have never been measured, 
and could not have been eliminated. 

Farm II where I lived from two and one-half to eleven 
and one-half years, I have driven by perhaps a dozen times 
since I left it. The house was almost immediately removed, 
as were the trees near it, and everything was smoothed and 
grassed over, so that where it once stood is now an open 
mow-lot. All the outbuildings, including bam, shop, shed, 
und stable, remain almost entirely unchanged. Once or 



NOTE ON EARLY MEMORIES 303 

perhaps twice in the nearly sixty years since we left it I 
have walked over the farm a little, but in my study of 
these places now I spent a day, notebook in hand, zigzagging 
systematically across it from end to end, save perhaps in 
the more densely wooded parts, and hardly a square rod 
of ground escaped observation. Of nearly eight hundred 
items noted I am quite sure that at least half have been 
in my mind in some connection since. In the case of most 
of the rest the faintness of the reminiscent sense tends to 
confirm my impression of no such intermediate revival. 
The most striking experience of all was on coming sud- 
denly upon a wild rose bush in a pasture near the house, 
which somehow affected me profoundly and actually evoked 
tears, and something almost like a sob for some reason 
utterly unaccountable. I could not possibly recall emy- 
thing definite about it except that it somehow very closely 
suggested my mother and brought up later the image of 
her looking out from the front door up the rugged pasture 
hiU, where it stood. I fancy that it was this very bush 
that my automatic imagery used to associate with her sing- 
ing **The Last Rose of Summer," which always seemed to 
me very pathetic; but, although I have racked my brain 
since, I can recall nothing else. 

A distinct class of impressions are those which at first 
sight I vividly remembered with a sense of a very long 
intervaL since their last recall. Among these were, for in- 
stance, a peculiar flat white rock against which I was fond 
of glancing stones to see them strike fire. Another large 
squarish stone in a brook beneath which I caught my larg- 
est fish in a most peculiar way, and with a pin hook at 
that; a slight bend in an elm which otherwise I remem- 
bered very well ; a rectangular stone sluice at the entrance 
of a little causeway; the strips of ash bark on the beams 
of the barn ; a large twisted knot-hole through which swal- 
lows entered it; the peculiar tan color of the boards as 



304 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

they approached the eaves; two large piles of stone near a 
stone bridge; some curiously weathered ledges; a peculiar 
branch in a beech tree in the woods; the shadows of the 
sun shining through the beeches upon ferns at a certain 
spot; an old tree, the roots of which diverged long before 
they entered the ground ; a large white rock in the wall at 
the remotest comer of the pasture shaded by an immense 
beech ; — oft repeated experiences, such as coming to a pecu- 
liar curve in some woodpath ; a rise or fall of the ground ; 
a hollow or a knoll; a bend in the little stream; patches 
of brakes and polypods, elders and sumachs; these and 
other impressions like them glowed up vividly in memory. 
The larger features of a diversified landscape are probably 
the most permanent forms of all topographical memory, 
but here again slight elevations or depressions in the 
ground seemed to be almost indelible. I could never have 
recalled them in the sense of active recollection, but when 
presented to sense, I remembered them with great certainty 
and detail, as indeed I did many peculiar knolls in one part 
of the farm where these abounded, and not a few of the 
best holes for both fishing and swimming in the large and 
small brook which flowed through it. I estimate that up- 
wards of four score individual trees in the ten or fifteen 
acres of woodland and in the orchard were definitely identi- 
fied, as were the many groups of spruce, hemlock, willow, 
and white poplar. One knoll strongly suggested winter- 
greens, and on going to it there they were. Another damp 
place in the edge of the woods brought to mind jacks-in- 
the-pulpit some time before I got there, and there too they 
were, though without any sense of ever having seen them 
there before. Pausing at familiar spots and striving to 
bring up associations with their salient features rarely 
brought anything so vividly to mind as what was pre- 
sented to sense, but there was often a feeling like the glint 
of partial or possible imagery as though perhaps there had 



NOTE ON EARLY MEMORIES 305 

been many associations which had become too felted to- 
gether to be disentangled. Places near the house were, of 
course, best known. Those near the two roads, that nearly 
quartered the farm, and near the footpaths, driveways, 
and woodroads came next. Rocks and stones in these, and 
indeed everywhere, are the sheet anchors of this kind of 
memory, as they do not change. Special and somewhat 
exceptional features are what evoke and start reminiscent 
imagery, and when these were lacking I have sat long 
studying places I once knew most intimately, but have 
been unable to recall anything. 

Another class of memories among the most vivid of all 
were those associated with the strong instincts of play and 
its incidents. Verj^ many square rods of ground where I 
had mowed and raked I could recall nothing of, while 
another no better marked spot shone out like a star of the 
first magnitude, as a place where I had caught a mink, 
built a willow booth, slid in winter, learned to skate, 
pushed over my little brother, had a long fight after school 
with another boy; made my first effort to smoke; built a 
bonfire; played fox and geese in winter, etc. Over and 
over again this moral, that work is forgotten and things 
interesting remembered, recurred, although this rule, if 
such it be, is not without important exceptions. If I re- 
membered where I shot a crow I recall just as well where 
the hired man hit me with the ox whip. I remembered 
where I found a quarter in the road, and remembered quite 
as well where a team was for some time stuck in a snow- 
drift near by, which I helped the men dig out. A ditch, a 
bit of stone wall that was built, a sugar-house, changes in 
the cellar, the stable, several new tools, the new sleigh, 
buggy, robe, harness, and scores of other such things asso- 
ciated more with work than with play seemed to stand out 
almost as vividly as the new sled, the new suits of clothes 
and hats, little pleasure trips, etc. 



306 EECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

Another group of reminiscences, if such they may be 
called, were moods with no definite picture. A kind of 
open glen in the woods, for instance, recalled nothing, but 
gave a very extraordinary and unwonted sense of pleasure 
and of previousness. A big dark rock, which I must have 
known intimately, gave a very substantial impression of 
frowning stability unique in its emotional tone, and to 
which I seemed to owe a certain power of appreciating 
moral steadfastness, although my memory could only say 
** perhaps a rock was here." The distant sight of a group 
of hemlocks suggested that they were striving to conceal 
something, and this gave them a kind of secretive char- 
acter. A large wide-spreading beech that stood alone 
brought up a unique feeling of large and benignant gen- 
erosity. The angle of the woods against the sky in one 
place, behind which the sun used to set, evoked with much 
force a sense of being restrained, limited, shut out from 
something very much desired. On entering the woods 
from the open lot there was a sense of being on more solemn 
ground with an old feeling of awe and hush, of being shut 
in, of low-toned vague fear with indefinite expectancy. 
The note of a wood thrush very familiar there, which was 
heard again, never vibrated so deeply. The view of the 
house as it used to be, and the open lot beyond, had an 
almost human expression of smiling invitation that always 
drew me like a magnet. The noises of the brook, where it 
parted each side of a large stone and then paused in a deep 
dark spot under the willows, gave a sense of hurry and rest 
very pleasantly contrasted; while the brook always had 
strange drawing power, and kept saying *'come and play 
with me.'' An old sash with small window panes, in one 
of which was a peculiar air bubble, instantly revived a 
whole series of frost pictures that I used to watch with 
great interest when they were \ery elaborate in the morn- 
ing and as they gradually melted away, always beginning 



NOTE ON EARLY MEMORIES 307 

in the upper middle of each pane, and letting in the view 
without. The scenes we used to fancy and even draw in 
the frost, and the zest with which the rain was watched 
with a kind of hedonic narcosis, as it trickled in lines of 
broken drops against these panes, have left their marks 
upon my soul. I believe that I could fill a volume with 
descriptions of things, processes, and incidents connected 
with this place. The new and striking generalization of all 
the study here, however, was that the physical features of 
this old farm had such amazing power to play upon my 
deeper sentiments and emotions. The buttercups, clovers, 
and many flowers and plants, — all had psychic qualities 
and definite expressions; so did the clouds, the rainbows, 
the rising and setting sun, the moon, the stars, particu- 
larly Orion and the Dipper, the noises of the wind, etc. 
Love, pity, deep dislike, fear, religious awe, aspiration, 
juvenile ambition, directly stimulated by the excelsior 
motive of hill-climbing, and every shade and color of joy 
and sorrow, pleasure and pain, seemed to have been 
brought out by the items and incidents of this environment 
as a skilled musician evokes all the possibilities of his in- 
strument. I deem it fortunate to-day that I was exposed 
to such impressions, and hold that all the advantages of 
city life and of better schools would have been too dearly 
bought by the sacrifice of these. The country is the child's 
heaven, and every child ought to spend as much of his life 
as possible under the influences of Nature ; and I doubt if 
there has ever been a better school of infancy than the old 
New England farm in its best days. 

Very many of the objects in this place retained the very 
vivid associations with the imagination which they used to 
have in boyhood. A dark closet with no window always 
seemed a little awful, because it was associated with Blue- 
beard, who here slew his wife amidst a lot of dead ones. 
A spot near an elm in the pasture, otherwise unmarked. 



308 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

was where the demon in the Arabian Nights escaped from 
the bottle. A steep acclivity in the mow land with rocks 
and scrub trees was Bunyan's **Hill of Difficulty," and a 
boggy place in the cowpath was the ** Slough of Despond.*' 
Moses lay amid the bulrushes behind the willows just below 
the dam. Understanding that an altar was a large pile of 
stones, I pictured Abraham about to slay Isaac near one 
in the east lot, and no experience of my real life is more 
vividly associated with that spot. Not seeing very many 
pictures, I made them, and the features of this farm were 
the scenic background and setting for many an incident 
and story. Everything read to me was automatically lo- 
cated. Miss Southworth's stories, which I conned furtively^ 
in * * The Ledger, ' ' all seemed to have been laid out on this 
farm, with the addition of a few castles, palaces, under- 
ground passages, dungeons, keeps, etc. In a school com- 
position, I parodied Addison *s '* Temple of Fame/' using 
local personages and events, and there it still stands in all 
its dazzling marble magnificence, with its spires, bright 
shining steps, streaming banners, minarets, massive col- 
umns, and a row of altars within, on a hill in our pasture, 
which in fact is drearily overgrown with muUen and 
brakes. The *' Sleeping Beauty'* was just behind a clump 
of hemlocks. Under a black rock in the woods was where 
the gnomes went in and out from the center of the earth. 
My mother told me tales from Shakespeare and I built a 
Rosalind's bower of willow, located Prospero's rock and 
Caliban's den. Oberon lived out in the meadow in the 
summer, but could only be seen by twilight or in the morn- 
ing before I got up. There was a hollow maple tree where 
I fancied monkeys lived, and I took pleasure in looking for 
them there. 

After a gun was given me, I peopled all the brush and 
trees with small and even large game. One spot of brush 
was a jungle, going past which I held my weapon ready 



NOTE ON EARLY MEMORIES 309 

to shoot a tiger quick, if he should spring out suddenly at 
me. On one tree I once saw a hawk, which I fired at from 
an impossible distance, and toward this I always stole up 
for years after, hoping to find the same hawk, or if not 
that, an eagle, or just possible the great roc itself. This 
gun was perhaps the most effective stimulus of the imagina- 
tion I ever had, for it peopled the whole region about with 
catamounts, wolves, bears, lynxes, wild cats, and a whole 
menagerie of larger animals ; made me the hero of many a 
fancied but thrilling story; took me over a very much 
wider area of territory and helped a sort of adventurous 
exploring trait of mind, which I think on the whole may 
be favorable to originality and independence. Moreover, 
it gave me some knowledge of animals and their ways, 
prompted me to make a trunkful of stuffed and otherwise 
prepared collections of the meager fauna of that region, 
and although it perhaps did not teach me much, natural 
history, it gave me what was better for that stage — a deep 
sympathy with, and interest in, animals and all their ways, 
which now quickens my interest in the psychology of in- 
stinct. Although it aroused a passion for killing, which 
is anything but commendable, it may have stimulated the 
very strong reaction of later years, which now makes it 
almost impossible for me to give pain to any animal. 

In another group perhaps may be placed revivals of 
things long since entirely vanished — an old hollow log 
here, a rock long ago blasted away, the details of every 
room in the long since demolished house, the garden, espe- 
cially its more permanent features, the vanished orchard, 
etc. In many such cases the environment has brought up 
the missing thing so vividly that were it installed into 
objective reality just as it was fancied, I think little correc- 
tion would be needed. Yet, on the other hand, there are a 
number of items of vanished things which I had entirely 
forgotten, quite as prominent as these and as closely con- 



310 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

nected with, my life, which have been furnished by my 
sister, but are now so well incorporated in my memory 
plexus that they seem to be reinstated just as securely and 
naturally as those images which I had preserved without 
aid. 

Another feature was the element of personality about 
certain objects, which the faint traces that I am now able 
to recall show that it must once have been very strong. 
Three white stones in the buttress of a bridge, with no 
resemblance whatever to a face, always gave me the im- 
pression of being pleased, satisfied, contented, and constant. 
A large window in the barn was broad and smiled forth 
its good will upon all passers-by. A tall slender young 
tree near the house seemed inspired with ambition to mount 
as high as possible and to exercise guardian and protective 
functions. A sharp steep hill a quarter of a mile away in 
front seemed to frown, threaten and repel, but an open 
flat, which extended still farther up by the brook side, 
invited and almost beckoned us to walk up it. A crooked 
tree seemed tense, dissatisfied, unhappy, and another with 
low branches always invited us to climb and took pleasure 
in having us in its limbs. When the wind blew, this tree 
talked to us and we patted it. The horses, sheep, cows, 
pigs and hens, all had individual traits and character and 
many of them had names I even now recall. Some were 
feared, others hated, and yet others loved; while some 
possessed only indifferent qualities. We were never alone 
when in their company, and there was always a relief, espe- 
cially if it was a little dark, in finding them in the pasture. 
One whole chapter could be written upon the celestial 
experiences; the peculiar sunsets which invited us or sug- 
gested the Judgment Day; the storms of rain, snow and 
hail, with thunder; the wind with all its notes and noises 
in the trees and down the chimney; and especially the 
clouds with all their peerless schooling for the imagina- 



NOTE ON EARLY MEMORIES 311 

tion. Everything conceivable almost was seen in their 
forms and they contributed even more than thunder to give 
a sense of reality above. 

Some of the objects upon this farm which came home 
very distinctly to the mind, I believe, were of things I never 
had directly in the focus of attention but were known in 
indirect thinking as automatic side activities. Often when 
meditating on a subject or intent upon a strong experience 
of pleasure or pain, I used to catch my mind at a totally 
irrelevant perceptive process and would almost ejaculate 
the word **by" the window, tree, or whatever object this 
latter process concerned. This was a unique and oft- 
repeated experience, and I cannot with confidence explain 
the connotations of this word that spontaneously came to 
designate it. It was when an alien impression was injected 
into a train of thought and perhaps when two disparate 
psychoses were contemporaneously in the mind. I think 
the *'by'' meant ''halloo" clock, post, or whatever it was, 
*'you are thrusting yourself upon a train of associations 
where you do not belong," unless by way of a kind of 
punctuation or cross-association. 

Retracing the same path and also carefully rethinking 
all that it suggested, step by step, often brought out a new 
crop of memories. All these from this or any other source 
needed but very little effort to be fixed. Indeed on read- 
ing over my notebook items, I find not only little help from 
it, but I can generally go beyond it and add new points. 
Hence comes the impression that were I to spend some 
weeks on the old places new impressions would continue to 
arise. Almost everything had a mnemonic value and dur- 
ing how many repetitions this fecundity would continue, 
it is impossible to tell. 

Again all the distances seemed less; the hills were 
smaller ; the effort of walking above the woods and to other 
extreme points of the farm was not so great as at the age 



312 RECEEATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

of eleven or twelve. Perhaps part of tMs is due to a rather 
robust muscular habit that has grown wonted to consider- 
able exercise and to much longer walks, but I am inclined 
to think a part of it must be explained as due to a develop- 
ment of larger space experiences which made the "whole 
place seem small. Eye-minded impressions have in my 
sedentary life grown yet faster than motive impressions. 
The general outlines and large relations and directions of 
things rarely needed reconstruction. Envisagement mainly 
jBlled in details and revived old memories. * ' Yes, there was 
a tree here, a nutting place, a cow path, blackberries, a 
curious stone there, this was the old door hook which it is a 
certain pleasure to rescue from entire forgetfulness, the 
same old stone wall half torn away remains. ' ' The pleasure 
in making these identifications was so strong as to prompt 
me to wish to buy back the old farm, build a study and 
work here; or perhaps to read, think, or even write at 
different places giving the mind some opportunity to wool- 
gather and letting revery have a long line, partly to revel 
in the pleasure of revival and partly from a feeling that 
one could do intellectual work here with some special ad- 
vantage. Do such revivals link the present and past in a 
sanif ying, useful, restful or tonic way ? Do they strengthen 
the cornerstones of the mind and soul or ought these ruined 
memories to be left to fall away, while mental energy is 
devoted to more serious work in later adult years ? Would 
the revivals of such associations not tend powerfully to 
correct some types of slowly supervening insanity, if the 
soul was sound when these impressions were first knit to- 
gether? Wherein consist the surprising memories of the 
ups and downs of such curving ground? Is it primarily 
retinal as, of course, the larger features must be, or is it 
partly seated in the centers innervating the leg movement 
of running over or up and down it? Is it reaUy advan- 
tageous to carry such permanent topographic maps on the 



NOTE ON EARLY MEMORIES 313 

brain, scrappy, dog-eared, blurred and half effaced as they 
are, or is the fascination of these ruins the charm of decay ? 

In general, I find most of my sister's memories cluster 
about the house, where they are detailed and minute, while 
my own are much fuller of the farm. On the whole I was 
perhaps even more surprised at what I could recall than 
at what I could not. Memory seems more permanent than 
anything else on this place, save the general features of 
the landscape. Washouts have exposed some rocks and 
sunk others; little forests are beginning to grow up and 
part of the old one is removed; man has leveled, cleared 
away, filled up, put up and destroyed buildings and walls, 
but memory remains true to its past. 

Of the educational value of the inventory of my impres- 
sions of this farm, it is hard to speak. The deeper things 
like the discipline of toil, the pleasure of rest and recrea- 
tion, the seriousness of religious experience, the communion 
with nature ; — all these did their work and molded the soul, 
but have left few pictures. Yery many of the latter are 
concerned with items which might have been very different 
with little obvious change in evaluation. The memories of 
this period, while very numerous and distinct, may have 
less emotional tone than the obscure and uncertain recru- 
descences on Farm I; and yet very frequently strong im- 
pressions of father, mother, brother, and sister would re- 
turn with pathetic emphasis. There was here a distinct 
and all-pervading sense of sadness that all was gone and 
forever past recall ; and yet, when I frequently asked my- 
self whether on any conditions I would be put back as a 
child and live it over, I was able to think of no conditions 
on which I would consent to any such repetition. What 
then is the origin of this peculiarly somber hue of the 
*'days that are no more"? It is surely not all because we 
know they might have been better lived, nor is it because 
maturity has not still greater joys than they, nor yet again 



314 RECREATIONS OP A PSYCHOLOGIST 

all because pleasant impressions abide and painful ones are 
forgotten so that blessings brighten as they take their 
flight. Childhood is the paradise of the race from which 
adult life is a fall. Childhood is far more generic in body 
and soul than even woman, just as she is more so than 
adult man. The "shades of the prison house'-' are the in- 
evitable specializations necessary in becoming a member of 
the community, and I am quite clear in the opinion that 
the fascination which the memories of a happy childhood 
always exercise upon the mature mind is due to the dim 
sense that in those halcyon days we were more complete 
and all-sided, more adequate representatives of the race. 
The other charm seems due to the sensuous life of child- 
hood, which is all ear and eye, curiosity, interest, which 
devotes all its energies not to a bitter struggle for exist- 
ence or the intellectual working over of impressions, but 
surrenders itself with abandon to the impressions them- 
selves. This and, to some extent, the next farm were my 
earthly paradise, and although in the current that has long 
so strongly impelled young rustics toward more urban 
centers I have wandered and fallen far, I hark back to all 
the old local associations in these spots with a piety that 
is almost filial toward the very trees and rocks. 

On Farm III I spent a number of months each year 
from eight to thirteen. It comprised some four hundred 
acres and joined several others with which I became quite 
familiar, as they were owned by relatives. Of one aban- 
doned house into which I climbed, I still preserved a dis- 
tinct memory of every door and window, could have drawn 
the rooms and replaced most of the furniture. The inter- 
esting revivals, which I am sure could not have been in my 
mind for decades, were details like a peculiar door knob 
with a defect in it; a cross beam in the kitchen with a 
peculiar pattern of paper which I discovered by tearing 
off two later superposed wall-papers j several peculiarities 



NOTE ON EARLY MEMORIES 315 

about the cellar stairs; a white stone in the wall of the 
well ; a hollow in a door step ; a bullet hole in a shed ; and 
many others of the same kind. Often I was at first un- 
certain about these, but they generally soon grew clear. In 
one room there was an almost imperative association of col- 
lective prayer and of a quilting bee ; in another of a baby 
in a cradle, a young lady and her beau sitting on a black 
hair sofa, but there was no trace of any reminiscent feel- 
ing, although each of these items quite likely was really 
experienced. Still more dim are fragmentary images of 
people sitting around ; of some one in the morning coming 
out a side door, rarely opened, to pick flowers; of some- 
thing exceptionally good to eat; of something else very 
interesting kept on the stairs; of some curious kind of an 
animal in the sink, etc. Of the arrangement of the rooms 
upstairs, where I often slept, I could recall nothing what- 
ever. 

Another once familiar, but now abandoned, house into 
which I climbed produced like this a tangled meshwork of 
memories, which seemed to interfere with each other, so 
that when I often thought I had found a clew, it was hard 
to bring definite images above the threshold, but there was 
a vague, massive feeling of reminiscence that was overpow- 
ering, full of interest toned with both pleasure and pain. 
Here I unexpectedly came across an old school seat and 
desk which I instantly recognized as from the old school- 
house. A broken hearth of an old stove had a striking pat- 
tern which shone out with great vividness, and which my 
eyes as a boy used to be very fond of tracing out in revery, 
and I instantly recalled just how it stood in another house. 
A lot of rude abandoned sap tubs from which as a boy I 
used to help make maple sugar, and the general patterns 
and certain individual tubs were clearly remembered. A 
very antique chair, bottomed and backed with woven 
strands of braided colored rags; an old stool wliich my 



316 RECREATIONS OP A PSYCHOLOGIST 

grandfather often iised in lying down ; the broken part of 
the colored glass of the old clock ; the funny snapping appa- 
ratus of an old reel; the knot which made a defect in the 
cheese basket; a curious red salting box; the door of a cat 
hole also with a curious knot in it ; a blind window ; a crack 
through the broad hearthstone; a discolored spot in the 
ceiling; the mark of my knife in the woodshed door; the 
one imperfect brick in the back of the fireplace — ^these 
things suggested to my mind that objects, rarely and per- 
haps never in the exact focus of consciousness, but about 
which daydreaming and absent-minded revery no doubt 
played a great deal, constitute a large factor of such mem- 
ories. Irregular forms, like knot holes and exudations of 
gum, especially from spruce boards, imperfections in bricks, 
corner stones, clapboards, unsymmetrical trees, were con- 
venient perching points for the flitting imagination, and 
perhaps points de repere for quite elaborate structures of 
fancy, like the ink blotches of the psychophysic laboratory. 
At any rate, I doubt if such objects as these were ever the 
centers of so concentrated attention and so much or so long 
continued interest with me before. 

Passing to the house of Farm III, itself temporarily 
closed, but with some of the old furniture still remaining, 
and through every room of which I slowly went alone, 
notebook in hand, memories crowded very thickly with the 
opening of every new door, and seemed almost to assume 
the vividness of sense impressions. The old parlor paint 
never looked so white, the castellated old stove, almost 
never used except on Thanksgiving Day, was still there; 
on this side lay my grandfather and here my aunt in their 
coffins; the old mirror with its wide mahogany frame still 
had the little crack in the comer, which was even better 
remembered than the mirror itself ; the smaller long narrow 
one with its gilt and black frame and the gaudy flowers 
painted in the glass of the upper part ; the red table which 



NOTE ON EARLY MEMORIES 317 

still showed my ink spot on it; the old daguerreotypes; 
the carpet ; wall paper ; mahogany sofa ; the same old black 
books, Clark's Sermons, Baxter's Call, Bunyan's 
Holi/ War; the yellow boards and the bird's-eye maple 
cane-seated parlor chairs ; the large-figured red carpet ; the 
curious bulge in the post of the old mahogany stand, with its 
two yellow drawers with their two small mahogany handles 
each; the big red pincushion built on a broken glass lamp 
stand — ^were well remembered images in this room unvisited 
for at least forty years. In the sitting-room, where far 
more time was spent and which had been frequently revis- 
ited in the interval, I could not do as well, although I was 
able to jot down over seventy partial old memories of 
scenes and events connected with that room. Occasionally 
things I had first thought new, like the stone floor of the 
cellar, the place of the various bins and cider barrels, were 
later remembered. Here trifling things almost flashed back, 
which I cannot think had been recalled for decades, such 
as a peculiar latch fastening ; curious round-turned curtain 
holders; a milk stool with block and peg identified by a 
knot; a very old-fashioned green, black and red wagon; a 
large and curiously broken rock in the pasture wall; a 
cracked and worn-out ring in a discarded ox yoke ; a four- 
sided razor strop, red gum in one end and the handle 
broken; a few square yards of very stunted little daisies 
back of the barn ; the same old woodchuck holes almost al- 
ways in the same places. 

Some associations experienced very vivid revival. On en- 
tering the cellar, the first thought was of a pitcher of cider 
I had fallen with and broken; the next of an old apple 
parer; the next of a relative, I had often heard of, who 
long ago fell down the stairs of the old house and broke 
her neck; then of a musk rat I once caught at the mouth 
of the cellar drain ; next of the peculiar flavor and look of 
three of my favorite apples, one of which was of almost 



318 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

delusive intensity; the rows of barrels of apples with a 
slightly purple tinge ; of something very curious that once 
happened outdoors and which I saw through the cellar win- 
dow, but the very nature of which I could not recall ; of an- 
other something exceptional that once stood for a long time 
on the east side, and of something that hung from a cellar 
beam at a pretty well located point, but whether a hanging 
shelf, cupboard, dressed pig, or a cask of home brewed 
beer, I could not recall, try as I would ; the front window 
event may have been getting in potatoes or apples, clearing 
out the cellar, shoveling snow away to let the light in, a 
game, or a team driving up with company. The spacial 
reference was definite, but my brain functions here are in 
a state of unrestorable ruin, for they enabled me to mark 
nothing but the site, where once something stood, sug- 
gesting a prepotency or rather a prepermanence of site 
location. 

In wandering over this rocky, hilly and very diversified 
farm, almost every square rod of which had features all its 
own, my notebook was rapidly filled with the flotsam and 
jetsam of reminiscences. Sometimes the outline of a hill 
or a whole perspective glowed up, but more often it was 
some insignificant detail or incident. There was a spring 
once piped to the house and later to a tub near by, annually 
cleaned, which I knew well, with the trodden cattle path to 
and about it in winter and its cooling draughts in haying; 
but the brightest memory was of a story I had heard that 
once a dead muskrat was found in it. Here was an old 
wall with a high shady rock cracked a foot in the middle 
to which I carried the nine o 'clock baiting to the half dozen 
men, who had already swung their scythes in unison for 
three hours, and who here paused fifteen minutes to drink 
water with vinegar, molasses and ginger and eat the thick 
quarters of apple pie. In one comer as a boy my grand- 
father had told me he saw a bear; here he caught a coon; 



NOTE ON EARLY MEMORIES 319 

there grew the fever plants; there was a stony acre over- 
grown with poison ivy which I loved to travel barefoot to 
show my immunity ; two cellar holes rich to a boy in inter- 
ests with woodchucks, squirrels, lilacs, birds' nests, apples, 
and a little brook running through its garden corner 
where I made a toy sawmill that would cut potato boards ; 
there was a small hill thickly strewn with heavy white 
quartz boulders; a rocky corner famous for raspberries, 
another for thistles and yellow birds ; a beech crowned hill 
where the three species of woodpecker abounded ; the light- 
ning ash tree ; adder tongue knoll ; lightning rock ; the win- 
tergreen and running pine places ; the strange isolated rods 
of rank Texas blue grass; the sugar Louse nearly a mile 
from everything with all its rich associations; the many 
cows, calves, horses, oxen, and pigs, whose individuality 
is still preserved; the large pond, now a meadow, with 
many incidents of fishing, swimming, skating and trapping ; 
the solitary sheep bam, which, populous as it was, needed 
to be visited only once a week ; the half dozen barns I knew 
so well, and which in the winter when they were full of 
poultry and stock were so full of interest ; the places where 
soap, shingles, cheese were made ; the butchering and hunt- 
ing incidents; the long and dreadful Sundays with my 
grandfather's tedious stereotyped prayer, the slowly ap- 
proaching close of which was so welcome ; his mighty bowl 
of milk ; the weekly dressing of his hair, braided very elab- 
orately up over his bald crown; my making of complete 
palm leaf hats; my crude skill at the accordion; flageolet, 
fiddle, bones, double shuffling ; my soprano performance 
at the singing school; the details of sheep washing, shear- 
ing, breaking colts ; quilting, husking, apple paring, road 
mending bees and raisings; the kitchen dances Thanksgiv- 
ing ; the Thursday evening prayer meeting in the old school- 
house ; the two dozen herbs in the garret for medicinal pur- 
poses; fence mending, road breaking, laying in wood; the 



320 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

stories of tlie winter choppers by the fireplace; the long, 
discourses of one of them to me after I had gone to bed 
about the impending second coming of the Lord; several 
new buildings; the tearing down of an old house which I 
knew well till five by frequent visits, but of which nothing 
whatever remains except the memory of a funny old wooden 
latch with a string through a hole : — such lists which could 
be greatly extended showed me plainly that starting from 
such centers and working along association tracks as I sit 
in my study afterwards may be quite as prolific for the 
period represented by this farm as reiterated personal vis- 
itations and efforts of recall made on the spot. 

In meeting schoolmates of these and later days, I am 
often struck with illustrations of what I believe to be a 
general law, viz., those who finished their education at the 
district school retain far more vivid and detailed incidents 
of school life up to that period than those who go on fur- 
ther. In reunions of classmates of high and fitting schools, 
who ended their education at this stage, I find that their 
memories are more copious and retentive than mine. Those 
who stop at college, and again those who end study at the 
professional school without subsequent graduate or uni- 
versity study at home or abroad — all illustrate the same 
principle, that each advancing stage of schooling tends to 
obliterate memories of the preceding stage. 

With regard to the utility or mental hygiene of persis- 
tent efforts at revivals like the above, which may have in- 
volved something we can figure as regenerative tensions of 
decadent structures, it is clear to me that such interests are 
for the time a most salutary kind of diversion from the 
overwork of a year. The distraction seems wholesome, but 
if carried too far it may tend to diminish the vigor of later 
acquired interests or knowledge, and help toward the puer- 
ile tendencies often seen in senescence. Such memories 
as these probably linger latest amid the declining functions 



NOTE ON EARLY MEMORIES 321 

of extreme old age, when later attainments are first swept 
away. Much ought to be forgotten and the very neural 
structure plastically wrought over into new shape. Too 
great persistence of juvenile impressions may retard men- 
tal development, and too much accretion of such barnacle- 
like traces of experience may distinctly handicap the up- 
ward push of the soul toward an ever more complete ma- 
turity. The psychology of forgetting is in the main yet 
to be written ; perhaps the Wagnerian Parsifal, who at the 
dawn of manhood was able to recall almost nothing what- 
ever of his early life, represents a more normal type than 
most of us, or at least than I do. If Spencer's conception 
of memory as instinct in the making be correct, such recol- 
lections are the crude material of higher powers, which, 
have undergone arrest or abortion on their way. They are 
the unutilized remainders of our culture. Is there after all 
any value, when I have a distinct experience of envisage- 
ment with some of these objects with all the pleasure that 
attends it, in the attendant sense that I have envisaged it 
before ? 

On this farm my boyhood memories seem most distinct 
and numerous, although I was less familiar with it than 
with Farms II and IV. This was in part due to its greater 
size and diversification, the larger number of persons and 
activities going on, but also I think in part to the fact that 
my stays here were intermittent, usually only a few weeks 
or months at a time, so that experiences here became less 
monotonous and there were more of the intensifying effects 
of novelty. 

My notebooks abound in associations of taste and smell, 
both of which are very fecund. Caraway brings back viv- 
idly to me anywhere the soul of my experiences with the 
Puritan Sunday church services, and the three distinct 
kinds of cookies which I should instantly identify any- 
where. The sight, smell and taste of catnip is a whole 



322 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

plexus of feeling rather than distinct memories of my annt, 
mother, the white and yellow bowls, my drinking of it sit- 
ting up in bed for a cold, etc. So peppermint, spearmint, 
the taste of the yellow birch bark, the life everlasting, the 
sweet flag pods, slippery elm, the new grown raspberry 
stems, the so-called cheeses of the little barnyard plant, 
beechnuts, the medicine made of cherry twigs, the taste of 
certain apples known nowhere else, the smell of penny- 
royal, the barnyard, the breath of cows, of corn silks, new 
mown hay, brakes, freshly turned sod, burnt over pastures, 
spruce gum, the varnish smell of the coffin shop, the odor of 
pines, the taste of maple sap, sage, sorrel — bring up 
strange uncertain moods with quaintly accented emotional 
tones which suggest that the latter are perhaps the accumu- 
lated mold of long past years of intellection, the felted de- 
bris of vanished experiences, the stratification of past ages 
of life deposited in layers. I attended to many auditory 
impressions to which I sought to give opportunities of re- 
vival, when they seemed peculiar to this stage of my life. 
The sound of the brook in certain places ; the tones of the 
wind blowing through trees, especially pines; the song of 
several birds rarely heard since childhood; the whistle of 
the woodchuck ; the drumming of the partridge ; some pecu- 
liarities in the thunder at one house on a high hill ; the call- 
ing of cattle of the different species; the aspirated screech 
of the henhawk; the bubble of the sugar pan — all these 
showed again the close association of sounds with feelings. 
On Farm IV, where we moved when I v/as eleven and 
one half years, and which was my constant home for nearly 
four years and my intermittent home ever since, my system- 
atic exploration began on one of the pleasantest mornings 
of early autumn, with the sky a perfect blue, with a wide 
horizon of hills stretching from fifty to seventy miles, and 
some twenty-two shades of green as I thought distinguish- 
able in the landscape. These one hundred acres I own and 



NOTE ON EARLY MEMORIES 323 

have a great piety toward, and I would not part with 
them for many times their very modest value. From noth- 
ing I ever possessed do I derive such helpful and sanifying 
influences, partly because it is land and partly because of 
its associations. I have plowed or mowed, made fences, 
ditched, harvested, or followed cattle over nearly every foot 
of it. When worn out with work, worry, or grief, and 
sometimes if ill, I have gone to this farm, contact with 
the broad surfaces of which has never yet failed to speedily 
set me up. I own it, and it owns me in a sacred and unique 
sense. Just as nowadays those who ride behind a horse 
with a coachman do not know it as did those of old who 
rode on it, trained it, hunted and slept with it, owed their 
lives perhaps to its speed, and so owned it in a unique and 
individual sense; so I own this farm, in a way, too, that 
refutes at least in one sense the argument of those who 
advocate public ownership of land. The rooms of death, 
the almost absolute stillness that now reigns here; the old 
awe and vague dread of the evening gloaming, which I have 
lately reexperienced, bring a sadness so sickly sweet that I 
can hardly tolerate it — and yet it all has after all a won- 
drous charm. What, too, are the psychological sources and 
what are the stages in the hereditary development of that 
strong passion to improve land, never so fervent and domi- 
nant as in the early periods of New England ? Whence this 
rancor against forests and brush that even yet forbids us 
the comfort of roadside shade or the beauty of roadside 
growths? Very rarely in the history of the world has 
worse soil been cleared of brush and stones and made to 
yield a tolerable income and supported a more stalwart or 
intelligent race. To come upon a decayed stump where 
once was a familiar tree was a little like finding on a grave- 
stone the name of some old acquaintance who was thought 
to be still alive. I climbed several old trees with the 
branches of which I was most intimate when a boy; got 



824: RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

on to roofs I used to frequent; crawled under the bam 
floor; squeezed into the hollow trees in quest of memories. 
I spent a number of hours here carefully studying and 
making notes on two inches square of ground chosen al- 
most at random, counting each blade and root of each 
growth, distinguishing last year's dead from that of the 
year before; watching the ants of at least three species; 
slowly penetrating under a magnifying glass into the soil, 
noting the different forms of sand-grains and fine pebbles; 
tracing out the ant hole, and also coming upon a white 
grub ; going through the shallow mold where was an angle- 
worm, as a representative of the species through the body 
of which Darwin thinks this mold has often passed, to the 
red sandy earth beneath, and realizing what a rich book 
could be written on all that those two inches square con- 
tain. Up in the woods and grove I believe I could distin- 
guish with eyes closed the poplar, pine, beech, and perhaps 
other trees, by the noise of the wind through them. Per- 
haps I had better make my confession complete. During 
the days on this farm I soon gave up wearing my hat, for 
it shut off the view above and obstructed the susurrous of 
forest music, so that the ears had a freer feeliag without it. 
Soon the coat came off, for the heat, then the vest. The 
collar was hot and sweaty and was loosened. The spirit 
of boyhood was on me, and I suddenly preferred to carry 
my shoes and stockings in my hands. There must have 
been forty kinds of feel and tickle to the feet in the various 
rough and smooth rocks, sand, clay, hot and cold bits of 
roadway, diverse species of moss, grass and stubble, in the 
puddles and brook, the leaves and pine needles; so that I 
not only revived memories of barefoot days, but realized 
what an important surface of contact man loses and by 
how many stages he is removed from nature by shoes. As 
I was sure to be alone I concluded that pants only and those 
roUed to the knee would be enough and to spare. The 



NOTE ON EARLY MEMORIES 325 

contacts of leaves and brush, and the sun that burned my 
back may have been intoxicating, but however it was, I 
finally several times enjoyed the great luxury of being in 
complete undress, and of feeling pricked, caressed, bitten 
and stung all over, reverting to savageiy as I had often 
done as a boy by putting off civilization with all clothes and 
their philosophy. It was a curious experience of lightness 
and closeness to nature. Without the shoes one is let 
down half an inch in stature; the center of the gravity of 
the body is lowered; there is a sense of lightness; and I 
often had spells, sometimes I think an hour or more long 
and quite spontaneously, of singing, yelling, and many 
kinds of vocal gymnastics that sustained and perhaps in- 
tensified the peculiar kind of nature communion, philoso- 
phy and reminiscence to which I gave way on this spot, 
where I reveled in the rankest and most absolute freedom 
with, a kingly sense of ruling as well as owning. Here I 
may mention incidentally that I am a faddist on hill-climb- 
ing, because it exercises the heart and lungs so much neg- 
lected in sedentary habits, and exercising just those move- 
ments most natural and healthy, gives a sense of overcom- 
ing and surmounting with a peculiar exhilaration on every 
hill-top attained, with a sentiment of victory in the do- 
ing, of breadth and exultation in the end, besides enabling 
one to straighten out the axes of eye muscles and accommo- 
date for a distance. 

On and near this farm are many hillsides and many 
curious terminal moraines, almost terraced by cow paths. 
In one place I crossed sixteen in present use in about 
eighty paces, and there were many more in all the stages 
of disuse. In moving to or from feeding grounds, cows go 
in files and are marvelous engineers to avoid going up or 
down steep places. In and out went the scarped serration 
of the declivity, and right and left wound the cow-paths for 
perhaps one-third of a mile, occasionally deviating for 



326 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

young growing trees, nearly trebling the distance in order 
to maintain almost a water level, passing spots so precipi- 
tous that a false step might have been fatal, and altogether 
constituting a curious manifestation of instinct. 

This farm has been so often revisited that renewals of 
undoubted boyhood are fewer and harder than elsewhere. 
A curious crack in the upper right corner of a window pane 
was always one of the most striking things in the house, 
perhaps never directly in the focus of attention as a boy, 
but I found I could draw a complete outline of its rather 
complex figure, which I used to find myself tracing hun- 
dreds of times. Every room visited now, some after a lapse 
of but one and others nine years or more, had a memory 
tone more or less distinct and all its own. The most archaic' 
memory stratum was the attic, an old shop, a bin, and a 
quarry hole where rubbish had been dumped for many 
years. These I carefully explored, especially the latter, 
which I dug up layer after layer, coming upon older and 
older reminiscences with increasing interest and zest. Un- 
der ashes I found old carpets, broken crockery, things clean 
and unclean. I came upon now a bit of china, a piece of a 
stove, tool, bed quilt or carpet pattern, which shone out 
with diverse kinds of memory phosphorescence, each richly 
set in emotional tones and knit up with more or less com- 
plex associations or ramifications. Here I found a rather 
suggestive analogue of my memory strata, for things had 
been dumped here once a year at every house-cleaning from 
the first, and the organization of its material was about as 
slight, and the stages of decay were about as marked and 
progressive as were those in my mind. It was not unlike 
exploring the slowly accumulated debris in the west 
European caves of the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon 
Troglodytes. In a chest in the old shop were frag- 
ments of a foot and hand warming soapstone from 
which irradiated an idyl of decayed memories of my 



NOTE ON EAELY MEMORIES 327 

mother, the stove, sleigh rides, etc.; a scrap of blue cot- 
ton reins from an old harness shone up brightly from a 
great depth and were very well recalled after a very long 
interval; some curiously notched harrow teeth; a carpen- 
ter 's gauge ; a rude but wornout whetstone of rare virtue ; 
the lock of my old gun; a paper of sheep redding; two 
powder horns which I made and ornamented; a cake of 
oH meal once in high favor for calves ; a much admired pair 
of martingales; the strangely formed iron step of a cart; 
the brass nibs of my little scythe ; a red cherry rolling pin ; 
a ex)m scraper; many broken antique cast iron wrenches; 
the hatchel and wire foot-spool used in domestic broom 
making ; the six-inch needle ; leather hand-thimbles and 
black thread and broom press, with the paper of gold leaf 
for the handles ; a set of well marked wedges for splitting 
wood; the iron head beetle, identified by a peculiar gnarl; 
the battered seat of the old buggy, with its white broadcloth 
cushion belted in by a patent leather strap ; two door fas- 
tenings ; a part of a sled I made ; several traps for rats and 
woodchucks ; a jug of woodchuck oil, and a whip lash of its 
skin I braided ; a trowel, bullet molds, ornamented harness, 
my old buzz-saw; most of these surely cannot have been 
warmed up in my brain for several decades. Other things 
which had the same air of resuscitation, but which had been 
so open that my mind has no doubt flitted over them in my 
annual revisitations, but which it was a great pleasure to 
revive more definitely, were quite a list of stones, rocks, 
fences, wood paths, wild grapes, cattle; my marks in the 
barn and shed; the crowded contents of old shelves and 
cupboards, which I carefully reexplored ; the curious paint- 
ing of green and white spatter work on the floor of a room 
carpeted ever since we first moved into the house ; and here 
again suggesting a whole psychological treatise were door 
knobs, latches, hooks, leather hinges, wall paper, and grain- 
ing, often in the foreground of memory. The curious little 



328 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

arch over the window of a very nnfrequented room; the 
strangely figured paper on the rarely used fire-board; a 
knot-hole in the front of a chamber door; an unfloored 
place in the attic where there was perennial danger of 
stepping through the lath; a long unbroken comer of a 
stove door ; some blue bread we ate, an aborted product of 
our own wheat field; the figures on the old blue crockery; 
piy place at table ; several dress and bedquilt patterns ; the 
little red and lettered cup ; my penny banks ; a curious old 
firkin ; — of a good many of these I could write a brief trea- 
tise were I to characterize all the incidents and especially 
the feelings which they brought to mind. Here, too, in 
comparing my notebook with a list of things my younger 
sister best remembers, I am yet more forcibly struck 
with the great superiority of a girl's memory of house, 
garden and yard, and a boy's of the farm. 

In reviewing this memory furniture, many questions 
arise. As a boy I used to rake, pitch, chop, dig, and am 
fond of more or less of these same activities now. Do I get 
more rest and refreshment from these restorations of boy- 
hood activities than I should by rowing or indulging in 
new games that involved different activities and laid the 
chief strain on different muscles? Is it a correct theory 
of rest and vacation thus to restore old habits or does it 
tend to reversion in a way that makes progressive growth 
harder? Again the temptation here is always great to ut- 
ter abandon and absurdity, and to seek restored equilibrium 
from an overworked sedentary life with much brain strain 
in it by what might almost perhaps be called the silly or 
giggle cure. Does one rest any supernormally developed 
eictivities by exercising the subnormal weak ones? Is there 
here the material for a real new cure in a psychic restora- 
tion of the old joy of life characteristic of childhood? 

Another chapter might be written on hill experiences. 
One distant summit I had never climbed since one day in 



NOTE ON EARLY MEMORIES 329 

the early teens, when I had spent a good part of a whole 
Sunday there alone trying to sum myself up; gauge my 
good and bad points till I found I had been keyed up to a 
kind of Jeffrey rage, and walked back and forth vowing 
aloud that I would overcome many real and fancied obsta- 
cles and do and be something in the world. It was resolve, 
vow, prayer, idealization, life plan, all in a jumble, but it 
was an experience that has always stood out so prominently 
in my memory that I found this revisitation solemn and 
almost sacramental. Something certainly took place in my 
soul then, although probably it was of less consequence 
than I thought for a long time afterward. My resolve 
to go to college, however, was clenched then and there, and 
that hill will always remain my Pisgah and Moriah in one. 

Again a hill is a good dynamometer. Many years ago I 
began every summer to climb a distant hill and get back to 
the hotel, from which I started as speedily as possible 
nearly every day at five o'clock, and noted the time and 
have kept my record these many years. From my teens to 
the present time, I can walk rapidly on the first heat just 
about so far before my breath and legs become uncomfort- 
able, and I want to pause. This is approximately a con- 
stant and has not varied perceptibly in all these decades. 
For a long stretch of hill climbing, however, the case is 
very different. Training decreases my time much. Be- 
ginning last year with one hour and a quarter, at the end 
of a month I could do the same work with about the same 
forcing in forty-nine minutes. I hope to keep this record 
yet many years, and although it will be sad when the inevit- 
able senescent diminution occurs, the curve may have a 
little interest. 

A wide gamut of pleasure and pain is experienced in a 
remarkable way. When I walk to the old place from the 
hotel a mile away on a bright morning, the joy of seeing 
everything is very intense, indeed to the point of exhilara- 



330 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

tion and almost intoxication. As I wander about all day, 
take my dinner alone on the hill and continue the peregrina- 
tions of the afternoon, the pleasure very steadily becomes 
less exquisite, pales and declines. Sunset is sad and the 
gloaming becomes oppressive, while as twilight darkens 
to early evening out of doors and night comes and I go 
to bed alone in the house, memories of the past grow al- 
most insupportable, and old fears which sometimes haunted 
my boyhood, but have been unfelt since, of ghosts, robbers, 
and even of sudden death or fire, delay or even banish 
sleep for a time. My euphoria cannot hold out against 
night and solitude here. Nowhere else have I experienced 
these ancient fears in any such force, although I have been 
no less alone. • 

Several times, first on a dark stormy windy night and 
last on a bright moonlit one, I undertook to wander through 
the village graveyard, which is some distance from any 
house, but met with utterly undreamed-of difficulties. As 
I approached it, there was a depressing sense of loneliness 
which darkened down to a strange kind of fear. I found 
myself tense, anxious, expectant of something painful be- 
fore these apprehensions took any form or had any object. 
Then I thought of ghosts and kindred wild scenery, that 
made me as a boy run by this place after dark. As I 
forced myself to climb over the black fence under the pines 
and to touch a few of the nearest grave stones, the nervous 
awfulness of it all increased. I paused to gather courage 
and lit a cigar on the nearest tombstone, forced myself 
along a rod farther, paused and felt great tension. Had 
there been need, I certainly could have gone through or 
spent the night there alone, but each time I retired simply 
because it would have taken such a great nervous effort 
to have forced myself on. I dread great heights, but can 
climb almost anywhere, just as here the tension of the neu- 
roses is painful and wasteful. This experience suggested 



NOTE ON EARLY MEMORIES 331 

to me many problems. The old fears were not of very 
vivid imagery of sheeted figures, etc., but the fear without 
an object was intense. "Whether this was ancestral or 
caused by the many gruesome tales of childhood or both, 
it is impossible to tell. 

In an old yellow chest I found carefully preserved all 
my compositions from the first at the age of five on ''The 
Rat'* up through various contributions to the unprinted 
school paper and a kind of valedictory at the age of four- 
teen, together with several juvenile diaries which I was 
encouraged to begin at the age of seven. I also succeeded 
in finding again about all the old school books from the 
little red primer up to the ''village reader,'' Webster's 
speller, Colburn's and Adams's arithmetics, Mitchell's 
geography and atlas, the first grammar, etc., all of which 
I have carefully looked through, together with quite ex- 
tensive files of letters of my parents written to me from 
fourteen on when I began to be away from home. Of this 
mass of material the most striking fact is how much has 
been forgotten. The reader was in use for years, and yet 
I marked only fourteen selections of which I had any recol- 
lection. Several of them I recalled memorizing, but beyond 
the first few lines or verse or two there is only a general 
feeling of familiarity. The poetic extracts linger longer 
than the prose; of the fourteen I doubt if more than five 
have been distinctly in my mind since boyhood days. The 
great majority were utterly unfit for childhood, and I can 
recall nothing whatever, but it is always those that were 
best liked at the time that are best remembered. The 
speller is most familiar. Nineteen or twenty of the lists of 
words as they stood in columns (lady, baker, shady), I could 
still repeat if started. Many of the illustrative sentences, 
too, like "fire will bum wood and coal," came back with 
great distinctness. Clearest of all, however, were the fables 
in the back with the pictures, and next the abbreviations; 



332 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

but the three pages of laws concerning sounds of letters in 
the front and rules for punctuation in the back, memorized 
with such tediousness and unintelligibility, only had a faint 
echo of familiarity. Now from a perfect understanding of 
what they mean I could memorize them with approximate 
verbal accuracy in a very short time. It is curious that 
the order of disconnected words the same in sound and 
varying only slightly in spelling should be so much better 
remembered than coherent sentences, which were inter- 
spersed. This, I think, shows the very phonic nature of 
juvenile memory. Of the geography the pictures were by 
far best remembered, especially those of men and animals 
in action. All the scraps about the productions, the frag- 
mentary history and population, have gone, and most of it 
would be now valueless. The general outlines of the col- 
ored states was generally remembered, but I could now 
easier prepare for an examination in a new science than 
on this farrago. I read through the shorter catechism and 
recalled the relation and sequence of the sonorous words, 
and remembered particularly the crabbed places in the 
stiff and awkward sentences which were so antistylistic, and 
yet this at the age of nine I knew by heart, teste a diploma 
to that effect still in my possession, signed by the minister, 
superintendent and class teacher. Of Colbum's arith- 
metic, in which I was rather expert, the most striking recol- 
lection was of the symmetrically ordered lines arranged 
like poetry. Of the Adams arithmetic the tables of weights 
and measures stand out clearest, and next a few specially 
hard sums, and the rudiment of some of the ponderous 
rules, together with certain scenes of the schoolhouse (blue 
slate, blackboard, and teachers) that were associated with 
them. Of the primer the bright and scarlet cover was best 
remembered, next the pig sentences, and some of the alpha- 
bet pictures. In language work Green's grammar and 
analysis brought back little that was vivid or pleasing. 



NOTE ON EARLY MEMORIES 333 

The ponderous mouth work of the latter (adjective element 
because it describes a quality according to rule 17 ; of the 
third class because it contains a subject and predicate ac- 
cording to rule 23, etc.), looms up through the fog of years. 
By far the most vivid of all were the school declamations, 
various sentences of which could be recalled. 

The case with my own effusions was quite different. 
Almost everything here came back in a sense. The favorite 
topic of my earliest productions was animals and fights. 
Occasionally, at a very tender age, I lapsed into poetry 
which was very rich in promise of the bathos of later fresh- 
man and sub-freshman effusions. My two chief endeavors 
were to be either funny or eloquent, and it is hard to re- 
peruse these efforts without sentiments of self-pity, and 
they are a most drastic lesson in humility. The diaries, 
sometimes kept up at the rate of a few lines a day for a 
year or more (occasionally I would write up on Sunday 
all the space for each day of the past week), are mostly 
very monotonous records of the weather, going to school, 
but quite frequently with specific events, most of which 
recalled nothing whatever. 

Near the dawn of adolescence, the spring after I was 
fourteen, I conceived it would be vastly fine to write my 
own life, and this was spun out to some forty pages of fools- 
cap. It is fullest on school life and events. Nearly every 
term of the preceding eight years of school life I had had 
a different teacher, over twenty in all, and each of these is 
described and in order. This convinces me that a great 
body of details of early life remembered at fourteen lapses 
later, for I could not now recall even the names of all these 
teachers, still less their order. Most of the leading events 
bring up a sense of recollection, but nearly all the minor 
ones have been swept away in the stream of time. At this 
age, too, being an ardent admirer of Silvanus Cobb and 
Mrs. Southworth, I wrote in red ink a story of some eighty 



334 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

large pages and in ten chapters. This was read with what 
I was led to understand was the most eager interest, chapter 
by chapter, by a younger girl cousin, but by no one else. 
I have made several attempts to read it morning and night, 
when rested and fatigued, but it absolutely will not read, 
and my mind balks at early stages and I have not yet been 
able to get half through it. This same year I also made an 
inventory of all my secular music and catalogued eighty- 
seven pieces that I could either sing, play, or both ; but the 
tragic pity of it all is the quality. Of most of these pieces 
I could now whistle or strum the air, in some the rhythm 
seems intact, but the words are in various stages of de- 
cadence. Especially do I recall the secret day-dreams I 
had of being a great musician, orator, literary man, poet, 
etc. Strongest and perhaps most vividly remembered in 
all this group is the perfect craze for clog dancing and its 
various steps and shuffles, together with playing on the 
bones. 

This period of my life, and not before, is marked by the 
beginning of a coherent and sequent memory. From this 
time on I can give some account of at least every year of 
my life in order, and although I can do this to some extent 
before, most of it is both transposed and too full of gaps. 
My present life really began here, so that whatever has 
happened since seems far more a part of myself, and what 
preceded, despite the filmy links of personal reminiscence, 
is more objective and as if it were of another person. That 
a child of twelve months has certain memories of experience 
of the preceding week or month, there is every reason to 
believe. Mr. Colegrove ^ thinks males best remember pro- 
tracted or repeated occurrences, and females single or 
novel ones, and holds that there are different kinds of 
memories that culminate at different periods of life. I can- 

* Oolegrove, F. W. : Individual Memories. Am. Jour, of Psy., Jan, 
1899, Vol. X, p. 228. 



NOTE ON EARLY MEMORIES 335 

not, however, think that I remember clothes, tastes, foods, 
playmates, friends, special pains or pleasures, accidents, or 
exceptional incidents better at one time than another. Mr. 
Colegrove 's memory curves all show that early adolescence, 
and particularly the fourteenth and fifteenth years, are on 
the whole richer in memory material than any other period 
of life. Probably the years from twenty to thirty come 
next, as important changes are then occurring. On the 
whole I think pleasant predominate over unpleasant mem- 
ories in my life. During all these earlier years, there was 
no epoch-making event like the death or any severe sick- 
ness of a member of the family. 

Finally, there was every degree of readiness of recall. 
Some revivals seem purely spontaneous with no external 
suggestion. Others (the old weasel hole, the mill wheel) 
came back instantly and clearly upon envisagement. A 
plot of deadly nightshade was recalled quite clearly, but 
its personal equation was much slower. A flock of yellow 
butterflies at a certain spot in the road was dormant for 
some minutes, but gradually came out with great distinct- 
ness. A large bunch of unknown white berries in the 
woods I slowly came to believe quite surely I had known 
as a l)oy, but in other cases the reminiscent sense super- 
vened very slowly and perhaps was not quite clear till the 
next day. Other objects I must have known well gave no 
glimmer of reminiscence. 

I am able to recall several cases in which I have attached 
to my own memory continuum alien matter that has been 
told me and which after having long believed to be a part 
of my own experience, I was obliged to confess never could 
have been. Such experiences give me some little charity 
for those of my theosophist friends who talk and write of 
the memory of past births and describe their own previous 
life in the Lost Atlantis, in ancient Greece, when they 
heard Homer, or when they shouted for Caesar or Brutus 



336 RECREATIONS OF A PSYCHOLOGIST 

in the Fomm, or think they recall with great vividness the 
items of some particular event that happened to them thou- 
sands of years ago with many Lethes of birth and death 
intervening. 

On the whole, painful as have been many of the re- 
vivals in this pre-adolescent past, there has been a prepon- 
derance of pleasant impressions. WhUe this does not show 
that pains tend to fade and pleasures to brighten, because 
we have no common inventories of each, it nevertheless 
comforts me with the sense that on the whole my boyhood 
was preponderantly a joyouc one, as it was meant to have 
been. Finally, the act of recall itself has, I think, in 
every case had a certain unique kind of pleasure attached 
to it, so I will close this all too scrappy note with the feel- 
ing that if I were able to write a complete autobiography of 
my own childhood and boyhood, reflecting all of even its 
more typical experiences as they actually were lived and 
felt at the time, restricted as it was in both nature and cir- 
cumstances, so that it should be a complete history of all 
the stages of evolution of even one limited conscious per- 
sonality, it would be a book second in scientific and general 
interest as well as practical value to almost no book ever 
written. 



THE END 



3W7-6 



